Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this motion, the essential elements of which amount to a zero Covid strategy. Whether people call it a maximum suppression strategy or an aggressive suppression strategy, it amounts to the same. It is about driving down the figures of the virus, ideally to single digits, while having a proper testing and tracing system that is capable of hunting down the virus, jumping on any outbreak, finding out where it came from and dealing with it. Critically, it also involves having clear controls on the importation of the virus, something we have never had in this country.

I welcome the fact that it now seems that all the parties in opposition are in favour of mandatory hotel quarantining. Some of us have been looking for this for quite a while. I acknowledge Solidarity-People Before Profit in this regard. We in the Social Democrats have been pursuing a mandatory quarantining system for quite some time. Now that Sinn Féin, the Labour Party and many Independent Members and Independent groups are supporting that measure, I hope the strong voice coming from across the Opposition might be heard by the Government. There is the potential to do something good and effective in this country by all parties in this Dáil working together on a clear strategy, which has to be a zero Covid strategy. Nothing else will work. It is infuriating to hear the Taoiseach talking all the time about being "cautious" and "conservative".

Those two terms are being used frequently. That is the last thing we need in this country in order to respond to Covid. We need our political leaders in government to be brave and courageous and to pursue a clear strategy that gives us the best chance of success. We need to do what works. What has been done over the past 11 months has not worked and we need to be clear about that. The Government needs to face up to the fact that that has not worked and a new approach needs to be taken urgently. The essential element of that new approach has to relate to travel and has to be about having strict controls so that we do not continue to import the virus.

Looking back over the past 11 months, we know that the virus came from China initially. It then came here as a result of flights for a rugby match from Italy that should have been cancelled at the time, but no decision was taken on that. It then came from Cheltenham, in respect of which no decision was taken and no leadership provided. During the summer, there was no leadership on travel, so we got the Spanish variant, which accounted for more than 60% of cases here by September. At Christmas, there was no leadership on travel, so we imported the UK variant. This will continue, time and again, unless there is a change in the strategy. That is the fundamental point that the Minister, along with everybody else, does not seem to accept.

It is infuriating to hear the Tánaiste musing about parts of the country or of the economy reopening. This is fantasy stuff. Unless we change the strategy and pursue a rigorous zero Covid strategy, we face rolling lockdowns at least to the end of this year and potentially further. The reason that now, at this point, a clear zero Covid strategy is so essential is that there are threats from these new variants, namely, the South African and Brazilian variants, and who knows what other variants with what other impacts will arise. It is inevitable that there will be other variants. We need a clear strategy, therefore, to give ourselves the best chance of surviving all of that, because it is about surviving at this stage, and of being able to get to a place where at least we can look forward to some normality and some opening up of the country, if only at a domestic level, and a zero Covid strategy gives us the best opportunity for that.

That issue of travel is, thankfully, now coming to the fore and people are coming to the conclusion that we need mandatory hotel quarantining. I have a concern about who is in charge of travel in this country. I am making a call on the Taoiseach to assign responsibility for travel and quarantining to a different Minister. This is no reflection on the capacity of the Minister for Health - that is not the reason I am saying it - but as it stands, he is dealing with significant demands of responding to the pandemic and rolling out the vaccination programme while, at the same time, endeavouring to keep some element of our normal health service running. It simply does not make sense that the same Minister would also have responsibility for implementing and overseeing the regime for monitoring international travel during the pandemic.

There is not the capacity on the part of either the Minister or the Department of Health to do that, and nor does it come into that area of responsibility. That has to be made clear. This goes much further than that, if we are serious about addressing the issues of travel. It is particularly important now that the UK has announced new mandatory hotel quarantine rules for UK and Irish residents. This work demands a serious time commitment and a renewed focus to address both ongoing issues and newly emerging problems. Many of those emerging and existing problems need to be dealt with properly but have not been dealt with, such as oversight of what is being termed "home quarantining". I cannot understand how that can possibly succeed but, in any event, there needs to be the involvement of a Minister allocating sufficient time.

There is a need to prepare for mandatory hotel quarantining, including passing the necessary legislation, procuring hotels, transport and security and so on. Somebody needs to oversee the policing of ports and airports in line with the new rules. We need to stop the so-called Dublin dodge. It is unbelievable that has been allowed to continue and that we do not have sharing of data between North and South. That the Minister has ignored this for many months is unforgivable as there is an immediate need to share those data. The implementation of a joint strategy with Northern Ireland has been ignored. These things cannot be dealt with by the Department of Health or the Minister for Health. I call on the Taoiseach to now allocate responsibility to the Minister for Transport, to the Minister for Justice or to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, all of whom have roles and capacity in this regard. That needs to happen urgently.

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