Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I am very sympathetic to the cases being made to allow marts to reopen with restrictions. I recall that during the first phase of the pandemic, we did exactly that at a certain point and it worked reasonably well. I know that buying and selling livestock online is not the same. It is the same as buying anything online, but in particular looking at a live animal online is not just the same. I have heard of situations where farmers have been trying to join the mart online and have suffered from bad broadband or even cases where farmers have got together around a laptop and were probably closer to each other than they would have been had they been at the mart. We also need to be practical about these things. At the same time, one thing the Government is very clear about is that if we start to unravel the restrictions now, they will unravel and we really want to get another few weeks at level 5 to reduce the numbers to a very low level before we consider easing any restrictions. Like all businesses, marts can avail of the employment wage subsidy scheme to help pay staff, low-cost loans and the new Covid restrictions support scheme weekly grant that can be received when they are closed.

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