Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like colleagues in my group, I will vote against this Bill. The Bill is a fig leaf. It tries to give responsibility to An Garda Síochána to do the work the health service failed to do. Whether it failed to do that because it was mismanaged or was inadequately resourced is not pertinent. Either way, the responsibility for that rests firmly with the Government. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, was a member of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, as was the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. We were repeatedly told that testing and tracing was the key element in the armoury of the State for dealing with this.

We have tested repeatedly. We have used a PCR testing system which we know, and this is not a conspiracy theory from the Internet but was confirmed at the Covid committee and by Dr. Cillian De Gascun on Twitter, will include in those who test positive those who are no longer infectious. We then have to contact trace all the people who are not infectious and test them and a proportion, at least, of their close contacts, who will no longer be infectious. We are creating this significant requirement to trace. It may well be that PCR testing is, unfortunately, the best type of testing available, but it has its limitations. Whether it is because of PCR testing or otherwise, our tracing system has fallen apart. I have been flagging this for some time at the Covid committee. I have received telephone calls from concerned parents in Lissycasey stating that nobody was being contact traced, notwithstanding an outbreak there. Now, we are told that the whole system fell apart last weekend.

As it is all falling apart in the realm of health, we will now make the gardaí do the job. We are told there is not enough capacity in the health system. What is the capacity of An Garda Síochána? Is it infinite? Are we going to recruit gardaí tomorrow morning? Many doctors and nurses have come home from other countries. They have been treated shamefully. They have not been employed, but at least they are trained. I am not aware of a rush home by Irish police officers in the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand who might be available to be recruited as gardaí. They do not exist. There is fincapacity in An Garda Síochána, and that capacity must be used to do the job gardaí were trained to do, which is not to police public health. Policing public health does not work. It has not worked anywhere in the world and it is not going to work now.

I wish to return to a technical point, which is my concern about the potential constitutional frailty of this. The Bill states: "‘dwelling event provision’ shall be construed in accordance with subsection (6D) of section 31A;". When one looks at that, one sees that subsection (6D) does not define what dwelling event provision is. If a dwelling event is defined in this Bill, I would like to know where. Subsection (6D) refers to "When prescribing a penal provision to be a dwelling event provision...". We have not had time to examine this in the detail I would have liked. The Government does not like to give us time to examine things because when one does so, one sees that they do not add up. If we are going to penalise dwelling event provision without defining what dwelling event provision is in primary legislation, and we are going to delegate its definition to the Minister, there is a fundamental problem. Under the Constitution, the dwelling is inviolable and can only be entered save in accordance with law.

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