Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister succeeds in his endeavour to drive down the virus and rid this land of Covid-19, we will all succeed and we can all go back to the type of human relationships and interactions all of us have been sorely missing. It is now February. In January, we lost more than 1,000 people to this virus. We had more infections in January than we had in 2020 so clearly a new strategy is needed. Unfortunately, I do not get from the Minister's contribution that he understands the sense of the need for a new strategy.

Over the weekend, the Taoiseach acknowledged that mistakes had been made in December. It is fair to acknowledge also that mistakes were made across this Chamber in December in terms of what people were calling for and what the Government did. If politicians learn from those situations, that is good for politics. I can understand that the Minister gets frustrated when people in his party are peddling misinformation about Monday-to-Friday-only vaccinations. I would say that is deeply frustrating. I would say it is also frustrating when we hear people from the Opposition suggesting that we are at the bottom of the EU table in terms of vaccinations, which is also untrue.

I appreciate that the Minister is working within a level of misinformation. However, there are things within the Government's control that are making matters much worse. What happened yesterday was a classic example of that. We had a leak, again, from the Department of Education about the potential reopening of schools. I am sure this information will have been of interest to teachers, special needs assistants and parents who will be dying to know more about the potential reopening. It is literally days since 1,000 deaths were announced. We had more infections in January than we in the entirety of 2020. That was another leak from the Department of Education, the same Department that cannot seem to get anything over the line without making an announcement about it or leaking about it, which again makes the reopening of schools more difficult.

Then the Minister for beer gardens comes out and furthers his personal agenda, again making things worse by talking about potentially reopening industry and having family gatherings. This in no way recognises the fact that we are in the teeth of a body count. The Government's legislation on travel next week will apparently reference two countries. This is its great move after nine months of recommendations and calls from across this House. The UK is introducing legislation that deals with 33 countries, so why are we not going to where the UK is now? Why are we always behind? Why do we not become a European leader when it comes to suppressing the virus? There is genuinely no point in giving people hope about beer gardens, family gatherings and schools reopening if we are just going to go back and lock down again in May. People are going around the twist and finding it extremely difficult to function. We cannot give with one hand and take away with the other.

Unless we are serious about driving down this virus as far as it can go, we will just get into a yo-yo effect of reopening, then closing and doing it again and again. Then we will see new variants requiring a whole new strategy. This is not working and it has not worked so that strategy must be stopped. The elements in the control of the Government must be controlled. There must be no more leaks from Departments or self-indulgent press conferences from the Tánaiste, who is clearly not in line with the national effort and is again making the work we are trying to share in this House more difficult.

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