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

I find the defence that nobody said it would be this bad to be bizarre. It is like saying, when one's mother tells one not to put one's hand into the fire, "Mummy, you just told me I would burn my hand; you did not say my whole body would burn". The Government was warned about what would happen. It is simply not true to say that the Government broadly followed NPHET's advice. The Government broke from that advice in October when it refused to go into lockdown and the Tánaiste set out to undermine NPHET publicly. It also broke from the advice in a very serious way at the start of December when NPHET said it should not open the pubs and restaurants but the Government proceeded to do so. The Government also broke from NPHET's advice close to Christmas, when the team recommended the closing of retail but the Government failed to do so.

On the zero-Covid strategy, my understanding of what Dr. Holohan said to Deputy Boyd Barrett at the meeting is that NPHET would like to see the elimination of the virus and if we could pursue that, it would be excellent but he did not believe it was politically feasible. On 4 August, NPHET wrote to the Government pointing out that the team had previously recommended mandatory quarantine for all passengers travelling to Ireland from overseas and that this remained NPHET's preferred recommendation. NPHET has been arguing for mandatory quarantine but the Taoiseach did not answer the questions I posed on that and on workers working from home. Current traffic levels are way above those seen in the first lockdown. What is going to be done about it? Are employers going to be allowed to flout the laws or will there be enforcement of the rules? The Taoiseach should not hide behind the North when he is not even in favour of a zero-Covid strategy. Such a strategy can be implemented even without agreement with the North, although it would be better with such agreement. The starting point is to agree it here, argue for it and then argue for it in the North.

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