James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the discussion on the Bill and the Minister of State's comments. I credit Deputy O'Reilly for bringing forward the legislation.

I was surprised at the tone of a few of the contributions from the Sinn Féin benches on this. It is important that over the next couple of years, or however long the term runs, we in the Dáil avoid the "Government bad, Opposition good" narrative that is such an easy mantra to throw out. For my part, I will certainly engage with all parties and none in the Chamber and evaluate every proposition on its merits. Where a proposal is constructive and positive, I will engage on it and support it where I can. Where it is not, I will seek to find common ground. I suggest that this might be a better way to go if we are to find consensus and move forward. As Members of Parliament, we have responsibilities outside of our individual whipped party roles. I want to put this to all Deputies.

On the same note, I welcome Deputy O'Reilly's initiative in putting this forward. We discussed it at the Covid committee and elsewhere over the summer and there is at lot of common ground on it. It is not confined to any one party. One of the Sinn Féin speakers has already pointed out that I had been raising this legally and politically over the summer in various debates, and those conversations went a lot further in terms of engagement with the Government, Ministers, trade unions and employers' bodies to get to the heart of it, understand the important issues this raises and understand where it might go next and what is the best approach to tackle these issues. I thank Deputy Patricia Ryan for crediting me and I hope she credits me in the same way on Kfm local radio. It is good we are on the same page today.

The 2005 Act was introduced by a former colleague of mine, Tony Killeen, and it is quite right to say the definition of personal injury in section 2(1) of that Act included occupational illness and disease as one of the categories of reportable notifiable illness. I believe that Bill was in place for 11 years before it was updated. I understand, from taking consultation on the matter, there was some confusion on reporting obligations. Reporting was quite low. There were instances of reporting and there were probably some grey areas. Outside the scope of the Bill and the debate, areas of mental health were in the same definition and were later updated and removed. SI No. 370 of 2016 updated the Act and remove certain provisions, including occupational illness and occupational disease and some of the mental health provisions. I do not think I would have initiated it myself but I am told part of it was a grey area which was becoming a difficulty to define and engage on. It was felt it could do with more clarification. I might have clarified it rather than removed it but in any event that is what happened.

It is so important that at some point we impose reporting obligations. Drawing on local knowledge from the Kildare lockdown, we saw that the meat plants in that case were the source of three to five outbreaks, which effectively put three counties into lockdown for three or four weeks of the month of August. While I appreciate the point that the virus does not start in meat plants or in any other workplace and that it comes in from the outside, if it does come in and if the conditions are hospitable to its being rapidly transmitted, be that because of temperature, close quarters or perhaps even shared accommodation, as is the case of many meat plants, and it spreads rapidly to the extent that a workplace becomes highly infectious and contagious and effectively has to shut down, surely that is on the cusp of being a notifiable event, if not the very definition thereof.

The meat plants were the primary centre of outbreaks during the summer. Our schools reopened in September and, thankfully, they have been doing well and the Government has managed the situation very well. Credit where it is due. It was the first step back towards normality when schools returned in September. They are workplaces throughout the country for tens of thousands of teachers, special needs assistants, school secretaries, caretakers and everyone else in the school community.

Retail has also been mentioned. Sometimes it is forgotten that our retail staff are also front-line workers, be they in the local supermarkets, small butchers, grocers and shops. They have been trading throughout the pandemic. They are workplaces and in some cases those who work in them are not particularly well paid. Sometimes they are at the lower end of the labour market. It is important that where conditions could be susceptible to infection, depending on the nature of the workplace, certainly where people are in close quarters, perhaps warehouses or stock rooms, it can arise again. That is not to mention health care settings. To an extent, they are covered through other reporting obligations but certainly, with regard to catching Covid, in many cases it is already in healthcare settings for treatment purposes and people are being brought in with it. Healthcare workers need our support on this. That is very important.

When I read the Bill in advance of the debate, I was a little surprised to discover that it is Covid-19 specific. Perhaps what we need to do with the wider debate is examine what the reporting obligations should be for infectious disease in the workplace, and see where it comes in from and out of, how it spreads and what the HSA can do about it when it comes in, and perhaps move beyond the specific single paragraph Bill proposed here and look at the wider context. This is the benefit of the parliamentary process, which goes back to my points at the beginning about us working together and engaging constructively. We can do so during pre-legislative scrutiny and on Committee Stage. Perhaps the matter can be teased out and I advocate to Deputy O'Reilly and the members of the committee that it is an exploration worth engaging in.

I spoke to the Minister of State and to the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, earlier and I am aware that statutory instruments have been introduced to deal with the specifics of this. A statutory instrument is appropriate for a specific measure and primary legislation is appropriate for a general principle. This is always the way we have legislated and it makes sense to do it that way. Biological agents have been recognised in a new statutory instrument brought into force in recent weeks, and protocols are being put in place for the HSE, which has always been a notifiable body in this instance, to share that information with the HSA. This is very welcome. I look forward to the Bill's progression and I look forward to the wider debate and seeing where it goes on Committee Stage and what changes are proposed. It is an important move.

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