Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The UK variant is now the dominant virus and we can see just how difficult it is to get the numbers down. Yesterday, there were over 1,000 positive cases, six weeks after the level 5 restrictions were imposed, with another six weeks in level 5 all but announced. There were just under 1,000 people in hospital yesterday, with the numbers in ICU remaining in the low 200s and, sadly, we are still hearing of high numbers of deaths. RTÉ's "Prime Time" programme from Tallaght hospital earlier this week was a reminder of the huge physical and emotional cost to our healthcare workers, which is, clearly, totally unfair and utterly unsustainable.

While the positive numbers have fallen from the shocking peak in mid-January, suppressing the virus is going to be really difficult. That is all the more reason that we cannot risk importing new variants that could be vaccine-resistant. I raised the issue of international travel with the Tánaiste three weeks ago and I asked about quarantine. He said it would be disproportionate and unworkable. He also told me that the majority of people travelling were doing so for essential purposes, which is clearly not the case. I wonder where he got that information. The Government has since announced that it intends to introduce quarantine and also some additional measures. However, the practical aspects of quarantine lag far behind the announcement. The expectation was that we would be all in here passing the legislation that was needed and that there would be some forward planning for worst-case scenarios, which obviously has not happened.

Test, trace and isolate are key parts of our strategy in the suppression of the virus, but the Tánaiste has said that it is impossible when the numbers get very high to use that effectively as a strategy. We can see that there are two ways of dealing with this virus until the vaccine gives us protection. One is to go for near-zero suppression, with aggressive test, trace and isolate together with strict measures in place to prevent further variants arriving into the country. However, such measures have to be workable; they cannot be self-governing. The other way is rolling lockdowns, with all the damage that they bring. There is no easy solution to this. There is damage no matter what. It is a question of limiting that damage, but it seems that we have a bit of both.

We are hearing that the plan for living with Covid is due to be updated. What does the Government mean by "living with Covid"? Instead of dates, can the Tánaiste state what that looks like in numbers? Is it near zero cases or is it cases in the low hundreds? We can see when it is low hundreds how quickly that can escalate. The day the UK flights were halted in December, there were 484 cases, 200 people were in hospital and 31 were in ICU. We have seen what happened since. I have a few specific questions in this regard. If there is to be a further six-week lockdown, what is the aim in terms of numbers? Has that been modelled and is it known what activities are most dominant in terms of the spread of the virus? The public needs specific rather than general information.

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