Michael Lowry (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This Labour Party motion is purely idealistic. It is a far cry from the Labour Party calling the lockdown too draconian and bonkers last September. Had it been presented at a much earlier stage of the pandemic, it may have had some advantages. That ship has sailed, however.

Nowhere in the Labour Party plan is there mention of how business and industry would cope with a national aggressive suppression strategy. While they may have coped with such an approach in the earlier months of this pandemic, 12 months after Covid first struck and with more than six months of closures, the appetite and ability to commit to even stricter restrictions would be impossible to tolerate. The focus of business and enterprise now is the struggle to survive and rebuild. For them, the urgent need is to reopen safely and salvage what they can as soon as they can.

Yesterday, at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications Networks, representatives of the aviation sector set out a bleak analysis of the future of the sector arising from a further international travel ban. This ban will have enormous consequences and a devastating impact on thousands of workers and their dependent families. Airlines will not survive another summer of inactivity. The extent and magnitude of the problem in this sector are daunting. It is an appalling vista for the aviation sector and all those who are dependent on it.

There is no mention in the motion of how the education sector would handle an extended rigid lockdown. How would pupils in special schools and examination classes or students at third level manage if their centres of education were to remain closed? The mental health of people is also overlooked. The motion does not reflect the major impact that this pandemic is having on the mental health of people of all ages.

Significantly, a glaring omission in this motion is how the timeline for a zero Covid strategy would play out. The aim of such a strategy is to drive down Covid to as close to zero as possible by imposing radical restrictions. The motion does not outline how long such radical restrictions would last. Would it be a year or would it be two years? More important, the Labour Party motion does not provide a roadmap for exiting this strategy. If subsequent outbreaks were to occur, would we go back to stage 1 of the same stringent approach? The Government, in conjunction with NPHET, already has a suppression strategy in place. The difference between it and the aggressive strategy being put forward today is that the former takes into account the needs of all sectors of the economy. While the primary concern is always about people's health, there has to be recognition that economic and social needs must also be considered. Failure to incorporate this into any strategy will expose our economy and its citizens to long-lasting damage.

Three weeks ago, Deputies from the Regional Group stated publicly that the three strands of the State's Covid-19 response, testing, tracing and vaccination, were no longer enough. We highlighted the urgent need to introduce quarantining. The Labour Party is now echoing that call. We identified many suitable locations for mandatory hotel quarantining. We suggested that airlines and shipping companies which transport to Ireland passengers who have not taken a negative test in the previous 72 hours should be fined. We recommended temporary border checkpoints within 5 km of our land border to monitor and turn back non-essential travellers to reduce the numbers coming in the back door. We emphasised strongly the need to concentrate on the rapid roll-out of the vaccination programme.

The Labour Party says that the vaccine is not a silver bullet. I believe that it is in fact our greatest weapon. We must utilise and roll out the vaccine with a sense of urgency and cohesion. People throughout the country want mandatory quarantine, temporary border checkpoints, rapid antigen testing, tracing and, most of all, vaccinations. What they do not want at this time is a zero Covid strategy that will plunge them into an even more severe lockdown for a long and indefinite period. That is not practical or feasible. It is unrealistic and counterproductive at this point.

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