Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have an Aoibhe myself. It is the kind of intergenerational solidarity that will get us through the pandemic. What comes across is the importance of faith to many in our community, which Deputy Tóibín also mentioned. It is good for people's mental health to get out and about and to get to church. The support that is there is important. The meeting really focused on level 3 restrictions because the archbishops accepted that level 5 involved severe restrictions but what was a surprise to them was that in the original iteration of level 3, mass had been excluded and they were making representations on that.

Deputy Tóibín mentioned other countries. In France, places of worship may remain open for private prayer but no religious ceremonies may take place with the exception of funerals with a maximum of 30 in attendance and weddings with a maximum of six in attendance. In Northern Ireland, places of worship remain open with a mandatory requirement to wear face coverings when entering or exiting. Funerals are limited to 25 attendees. In England, places of worship are again only open for individual prayer.

What originally motivated a lot of this was that, in the first phase of the pandemic, religious events in other countries proved to be a vector. These may have involved larger congregations but they proved to be significant in the transmission of the virus. Public health advice has been extremely cautious in the context of such gatherings. That said, we will take on board what the Deputy and others have said. We are reflecting on this in terms of exiting level 5, which we want to do at the end of this month. We will take on board sectoral representations, particularly the issue of worship and people's opportunity to attend mass and other services safely and within controlled environments during Advent and the lead-up to Christmas. That is what we will seek to do.

We want to get back to level 3 but we will look at certain aspects of it because, as I said earlier, we have done a fair bit of work over recent months to see as best we can the optimal triggers for the spread of the virus. We have worked to understand what particular events have been triggers and what has caused spikes in case numbers. NPHET will also advise us on all of this. We do not want to open up and then have very high numbers again in January or February. There will be a great focus on personal responsibility and the avoidance of large crowds both indoors and outdoors. The virus thrives where large crowds congregate.

On Deputy Boyd Barrett's point, what happened to those who were committed to industrial schools was an appalling abuse by the State at the time. It is very easy for people living in the modern era to look back. These homes all evolved from previous iterations. A combination of forces committed people, from the cruelty man, to the courts and An Garda Síochána. People made decisions arbitrarily that, because a woman was separated or the father in a home had alcohol problems, someone clearly said a person was going into a home as where they were was no fit place to be. This was said to me by survivors.

The State responded comprehensively and that should be acknowledged. Perhaps the Deputy's point is that it needs to continue to respond but let us not decry and undermine completely and say that nothing was done. A lot was done. The redress scheme was simply designed to make sure that people did not have to go through the courts.

When we originally made the response, we removed the Statute of Limitations requirements to facilitate industrial schools, but in essence they would have been in the courts for years. That would have been too much anguish and it would have been too difficult for them. That is why the redress scheme was developed in a bona fide way to try to accelerate some redress for the survivors of the industrial schools. My view always was that it was much more in redress and that the focus and emphasis should always be on the housing, health, counselling and other supports that people required, given the impact that being in an industrial school had on their lives and the degree to which it shortened their education possibilities. To a certain extent, survivors of the industrial schools felt stigmatised and lacked self-esteem and self-confidence. Their presence in the industrial schools did a lot of damage. I will engage with the Minister for Education on this and I will try to ascertain where we are in terms of the needs of those who survived the institutions.

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