Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for giving us the opportunity to discuss Covid-19 strategy. It is critical that we do because, quite frankly, it beggars belief that the Government is continuing to talk about living with Covid-19. Even more shockingly, this week the Minister with responsibility for housing has been citing arbitrary dates in a few weeks' time to reopen construction and other sectors of the economy with the cheerleading of Mr. Tom Parlon from the Construction Industry Federation, CIF.

This is a terrifying echo of the dire mistakes made by the Government in November and December that led to the terrible surge in infections that was fatal to many, which we saw in January, in a situation where our health services were almost overrun and our healthcare workers are on their knees. It therefore beggars belief that the Government yet again wants to go around for another twirl on the merry-go-round of surge and lockdown with all the terrible possibilities that means in terms of deaths, sickness, pressures on our healthcare workers and the almost racing certainty of a fourth or fifth lockdown. Has the Government learned nothing from the terrible consequences of the last year or so?

I therefore welcome the fact there is a move towards a different strategy from some of the Opposition. It is absolutely right that Deputy Nash, for example, should talk about the need for humility and grace when it comes to recognising the mistakes that were made in the past. By the way, that should also extend to Opposition parties that are now rightly decrying the Government strategy. In September of last year, however, the Labour Party called for the pubs to reopen, decried the public health guidelines as "too draconian" and "bonkers" and called for the resumption of international travel. There need to be honesty about the mistakes that were made. If they are rightly criticising the Government's flawed strategy and calling for an alternative, those parties that went along with it should admit to doing so as we make the case for an alternative.

Deputy Shortall has been consistent in questioning the Government strategy from pretty much the outset, along with People Before Profit, Deputy Pringle and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. Let us call a spade a spade about who was actually challenging the flawed strategy, which led to this dire cycle of surge and lockdown with all the fatalities and pressures it put on the health service. That alternative is a zero Covid strategy to at least try to emulate what has been done in New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan and many parts of Asia. People have got their lives back because the governments there did not try their to live alongside a virus that kills, makes people sick and overruns health services. Those governments understood that one does not negotiate with a virus. A virus is not interested in a live-and-let-live relationship that one can negotiate. The virus wants to kill and to make people sick. One cannot live alongside it; one must chase and eliminate the virus and have the public infrastructure, which is chronically lacking in this country, to deal with the outbreaks that will come up until we completely eradicate it, if we can ever do so. We can at least deal with the outbreaks as they do elsewhere, however. Some of us have been arguing for that strategy and it must include mandatory quarantine.

I spent most of Friday talking to an Irish public health doctor who is in charge of infection control in Queensland in Australia. He told me they have not had a single Covid-19 outbreak since June. Everybody in that territory is going to pubs, restaurants, schools, work and living their lives because they had a plan. They had legislation even before the pandemic broke out. They have public health teams that can deal with outbreaks and therefore society can function. We can and must do the same. Lastly, we must support workers whose industries and sectors have been hammered. We certainly should not be taxing people on the economic supports we gave them.

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