Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in the thanks to so many, not just those on the front line but also the many people who are making sacrifices to keep others safe. I do not agree with my colleague, Deputy Shortall, when she says that decisions should be made by the whole Parliament. Parliament has a role of scrutiny but the Government has to make decisions. At a time like this, we need to recognise that difference in roles.

As we move from the emergency, which is the present phase, with a focus on public health with NPHET's criteria consciously being narrow, we must move to a different approach. We need different structures so that we can break out of those narrow silos in order to effectively manage the critical pathways we all now recognise, namely, testing and tracing, quarantine and effective enforcement, so that people take tests; how we keep vulnerable groups safe; how we manage health facilities and use the wide range of health facilities to the best effect; and vaccine planning and modelling the virus. We need to reach into the private sector too. We are renowned for the data management skills that abound across the private sector. We need to bring that capacity to bear on the challenges we face.

We need to more openly balance the genuine costs of some of the choices that we make following risk assessment against the benefits involved. We have been very blunt with the instruments we have adopted to date. We need to become more forensic and weigh those on both sides, particularly as the risks that we see from the virus are decreasing and as vaccines emerge.

We need to evolve a different relationship with the communities and sectors we are trying to keep safe. We need to provide more information and have a more principle-based approach to allowing sectors and communities to evolve systems that are seen to be safe, and manage that risk. The truth is that we need to use all of the valves that can reduce risk in different social situations to open up every dimension of life in a safe way, including, in my view, wet pubs. As Deputy Shortall stated, ventilation, temperature testing before people go inside, rapid testing in some sectors, strict protocols on containment and quarantine being applied in workplaces, tightening duration of stay, occupancy levels and distances and the size and make-up of pods are some of the many elements that we can manage to reduce the risk in different sectors rather than have blanket closures. I appeal for that to become a feature.

This is a time when we need to pull together. Hopefully, we can evolve that new relationship as we move on.

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