Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach accused me of giving a warped interpretation of what he said, so I will repeat what he said, which is very plain: "we took a more conservative approach on the household visits, and then traded that off with visits to hotels and restaurants". The Government chose not to follow NPHET's recommendations on household visits so that it could open up hotels and restaurants. It is very clear, it is not warped. The Taoiseach says that he did that not because of profit but because of mental well-being. I think that most people, if asked to choose between being able to visit family and friends or go to gastropubs and restaurants, they would say it is more important for their mental well-being to be able to visit family and friends. It is remarkable how the whole issue of mental health has been abused during this pandemic by many people who never spoke a word about it previously, and now it has become a byword for reopening the pubs.

Like everyone else, I would love everything to go back to normal, to go out to the pub with loads of people and so on, but we are in the middle of a global pandemic and there are consequences for the Government's decisions to put short-term profits before public health.

Interestingly, one of those consequences is decreased medium-term economic growth. Just last week, an article by Martin Wolf in the Financial Timespointed out that countries that have pursued an elimination strategy have had much better economic results. This roller-coaster of moving in and out of lockdown is a disaster for workers.

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