Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Before I get on to the main issue I want to ask the Tánaiste a question. The Minister for Health was in the Chamber earlier. I asked him how many vaccines were brought into the country this week. He said 48,000. He is wrong. According to figures given to a number of journalists, in particular Craig Hughes, who has published them in the past few minutes, it was 23,570. How can a Minister come into the House and not know how many vaccines came into the country this week? Will the Tánaiste please address that with the Government? It is scary, very scary, as was the Minister's performance.

The Tánaiste is on record as saying he does not believe in zero Covid. I do not believe in the phrase "zero Covid" myself, but I do believe in the tenets of it. I believe in an aggressive national suppression strategy. Let us be frank. I am trying to be constructive. The Government has made lots of mistakes during this crisis. The Opposition has also made mistakes. There is no point in going through them. We all know. It is a case of hands up on all sides. We now know the vaccine will not be the panacea for 2021 that we thought it would be. It is going to take a lot longer, so we need to work on suppressing the virus. The Taoiseach has said it will be a long-term suppression strategy. I want to get to the point of distinguishing the difference between the Government's long-term strategy and what many of us in the Opposition are saying. We need to give people a chance of some form of normality in 2021, whether it is for funerals of close family members, which I have experienced myself recently, weddings, community, sport or getting the hospitality sector back up and running. I believe the public are ahead of us. Conor McMorrow's report on "Prime Time" last Tuesday night was the straw that broke the camel's back. We saw flights coming in from a number of destinations, but Lanzarote in particular. We heard they were full of Irish people. Everybody is making such sacrifices. The public are ahead of us and they want us to suppress the virus. As part of that, they want to see people being quarantined when they come into this country, not the half-baked strategy that is there already. We must also have a strategy for the Border - I believe the Government has taken on board some of our suggestions in that regard - and also on managing airports. Then, panzer-like, we can focus in on where the virus is in the community and suppress it. With the vaccines coming, we then give an opening to this country and bring back people's civil liberties and what they are allowed to do.

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