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

I thank the Deputy. I do not disagree with him on the utilisation of data to inform decision-making. That is important. Various sets of data can inform decisions. The Deputy is correct in saying there have been outbreaks in certain healthcare settings, which has been problematic for those settings in dealing with the normal throughput, services and so forth. To inform our decisions, our approach is based on analysing data.

Without question, I believe I am safe in saying that, after level 3, the decision to restrict visits to households was a key decision that impacted on reducing numbers, even prior to level 5 coming in. The spread within households has been significant overall in terms of the spread of the virus. I said yesterday - we can apply this to both households and other locations - that where we have gatherings associated with events and alcohol, we do get a spike. The data show that in certain areas and certain contexts fairly unequivocally. Deputy Naughten is correct in his broader point in terms of using data as best we can.

The higher we go in restrictions, the blunter an instrument they represent. Fundamentally, public health officials want congregation down as low as possible. That is up to us. People have been very good in adhering to this for six weeks. We are going to have to maintain our vigilance on this. The fact that vaccines are on the horizon should be a reason for doubling down now on best behaviour and ensuring we keep the virus as low as possible until we have more widespread use of the vaccine in the population.

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