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

On the zero Covid approach, the Deputy has been very clear that the advice of NPHET should be followed, and the advice of NPHET and the Chief Medical Officer has been consistently against a zero Covid approach on the basis that they do not think it practical or that it could work. The most recent discussion on that was between Deputy Boyd Barrett and the Chief Medical Officer at the leaders' briefing that we had the week before last on the Covid strategy in general.

I have been very clear and open on the specific strategy I believe we should adopt. I do not believe in the herd immunity approach, for example, and I think no one in the House does. I also said I did not believe we could achieve a zero Covid strategy and deliver it. Even now, in the context of dealing with Covid, the situation in Northern Ireland is problematic. For example, even when we banned flights from the UK to the Republic of Ireland, people flew into Belfast. The prospect of sealing the Border between the North and the Republic of Ireland is not a reality or something anyone has suggested we should do. It would be the only realistic way of having a zero Covid strategy. Alternatively, there could be a two-island approach between the UK and Ireland. We are so integrated into the EU and UK economies that there are practical considerations around the application of a zero Covid strategy.

The Government has followed, broadly speaking, NPHET advice from the get-go. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Ireland has been in a phase of restrictions with different levels of severity from the beginning, except for the summer months. That is the reality. The Deputy spoke about his correspondence, and I am open to a full evaluation of all of this, from the beginning to the end of the pandemic, when it is over.

My absolute priority now is to focus on managing and dealing with the impact of Covid-19 on our society, our hospitals and our critical care systems, as well as on the vaccination programme, which is the light at the end of the tunnel. That programme will enable us to get back to some normality towards the latter part of this year.

The extraordinary levels that we witnessed over the Christmas period, with 6,000 new cases per day, were not predicted by anybody. Even the letter quoted by the Deputy makes it clear, based on the modelling, that if the R number was maintained at 1.2 the numbers would remain low but if it went above 1.4, we would exceed 400 cases per day in January 2021. The letter also says that threshold would be reached sooner if we started with higher case numbers. The letter also refers to the UK SAGE evidence on hospitality in terms of reducing the R number by between 0.1 and 0.2, which accords with our national data, and points out that the prevention of mixing between households might have an equivalent effect on the R number. We decided not to have mixing of households from 1 to 18 December which everybody forgets. To suggest that the problem was hospitality alone is to miss the other elements relevant to this particular wave of the pandemic. Seasonality was a factor, as was the new variant. Undoubtedly, socialisation was a factor as we moved into level 3 from a six-week lockdown at level 5.

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