Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute. I will not be supporting the legislation, although I would class myself as a law-abiding citizen and believe in the necessity of laws. What is happening here is that Draconian legislation is being rolled out without any real discussion, except for this limited debate we are now having.

We are back debating the extension of four significant items of legislation without any review of their operation. No evidence has been put before us, with the exception of the Minister's speech in which he told us that what is proposed does "not sit easy with" him. Is it not a profound statement that the legislation does not sit easy with him? There is no analysis of its operation, no human rights assessment and no concrete analysis of the affects of the legislation to date or how it has been operated. There was no pre-legislative scrutiny. If something does not sit well with the Minister, one would imagine that he would look at the appropriate procedures and mechanisms and obtain an analysis of the legislation in order that it would sit better with him. One of the most obvious ways to do that is by means of pre-legislative scrutiny with the relevant committee and having the various relevant organisations come before that committee, including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, which we set up for a particular purpose, and other organisations as well. In addition, ordinary people might come fore the committee to indicate how the legislation has affected them on a daily basis. We have done none of that, however. We do not have a Bills digest because the Library and Research Service has not had an opportunity to prepare a comprehensive note so that we can be educated on what is proposed.

The Bill was listed as a priority in the Government's summer legislation list. There is no surprise about that, and we already knew about the sunset clause.

I supported the legislation which, significantly, was introduced the day after St. Patrick's Day last year. I remember having the most serious doubts and I did as much as I could in the limited time available to analyse what we were doing. To a man and a woman in this Dáil, we gave the then caretaker Government our full support. Nobody disagreed, even though many of us had serious concerns. Of course, it is a regular activity that the Government includes good and bad in legislation so that we in opposition are caught saying that if one votes against something, one is voting against the payments which are absolutely necessary. It is seriously disingenuous of the Government - as was the case with that which preceded it - to approach legislation in that way. I gave my consent in March 2020 on the basis of full and frank disclosure. If people go back over any of the contributions I have made since, they will discover that I pointed this out. I wanted to trust even though my experience in life told me not to do so. It was a pandemic and for the sake of vulnerable people who needed to be protected, I went with that legislation on the basis that the Government would come back and give us full and frank disclosure of how it was operating.

As already stated, our purpose today is to amendment four items of legislation. I will not go into them. They are all outlined in the Bill before us, which gives Draconian powers to the Garda Síochána and, indeed, to other agents of the law such as a medical officer. I would have thought that the Minister would explain to us at least why that is necessary approximately a year and two months since the pandemic was declared and when the numbers have gone the right way.

I do not like listing off numbers but as of 14 May, which was the last update we received, there had been 254,870 cases of Covid and 4,941 deaths. Some of those deaths should not have happened but that is a debate for another day. We did not protect our vulnerable from day one. Quite a substantial segment of the media had absolutely no interest in questioning what was happening when some of us questioned, way back in March and April, the position in respect of nursing homes, meat plants and direct provision centres, which were not put to the top of the list.

I can forgive mistakes being made because it was an emergency situation, although we were fully aware, in January, February and March of last year, what was going on in other countries. We should have been fully aware, from the HIQA reports, of the state of our nursing homes. We had to adopt a strategy to cope with Covid in a particular way because we had utterly failed to put in place a public health system - in the context of acute hospitals, primary care and, more importantly, the public health segment - that could assist us in trying to deal with a pandemic. Even with that strategy, we failed by discharging patients with Covid from hospitals and admitted them into other facilities without testing them. That, too, is a matter for another day.

We set up a committee, chaired by Deputy McNamara, which did a very good job and produced a report that was ignored. Then, the committee was disbanded.

In a pandemic, what is needed is trust. When all Deputies give the Government their full support in respect of Draconian legislation, if that trust is betrayed, it has the most serious consequences for democracy. It has serious consequences for me, as a Deputy and as a woman, having no trust in a system because I, in turn, cannot inspire trust. I still went along with the Government up to a point but as more and more legislation came before us without any analysis or data, I said - I say it again now - "No, I cannot do that."

It is not good enough for the Minister to state that what is proposed does not sit well with him. It is not good enough for him to come before the House with legislation that allows for rolling sunset clauses. It was the Opposition, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and various other organisations that insisted on a sunset clause in the first items of legislation and now even that is being undone with a series of rolling sunset clauses. The Minister tells us that he will change this with an amendment. If one were cynical - I am deeply cynical but I try not to be - one would think that we will now talk about a sunset clause in terms of how great the Minister is to realise that we should not have rolling sunset clauses and how great it is that he is willing to change his view on that as opposed to getting a full and frank analysis of the Draconian legislation before us from the relevant committee and that said analysis could eventually be debated in the Dáil. Deputy Bruton referred to the mental health tribunals. What the Deputy said was extraordinary. I am in complete agreement with his assertion that it is time for a forensic analysis of the legislation. One wonders how this legislation will be passed because there has been no forensic analysis. If Deputy Bruton is saying it is important, one would think the Government might also think it is important. However, we are going to pass this Bill in the absence of any forensic analysis.

Looking at the mental health tribunals that were introduced under the Mental Health Act 2001 following huge effort and analysis but, like that, it was decided that such tribunals could be reduced to one-person operations and could be done on paper. One would imagine that the Minister would have some statistics for us in respect of the operation of these tribunals. One would imagine he would have some information on how many people a medical officer has decided, in his or her opinion. represent a threat in the context of the spread of Covid, etc.. There is absolutely nothing before us, however.

The one good thing that was done was by the former Minister for Justice who gave a role to the Policing Authority to monitor this legislation. That, in itself, has given rise to fascinating reports. I understand that 14 or 15 such reports have been produced. I have monitored them closely. In April, we were informed that were 20,242 fixed charge notices had been issued for breaches of Covid regulations, 72.4% of which related to people for leaving their homes. Those in the 18-to-25 age group were the subject of 53% of the fines and 75% were levied on males. The point I am making is that there is a trend with regard to how the provisions in the legislation are being applied.

There are regulations that have never been looked at in the Dáil.

There are 92 Covid-related statutory instruments. The Policing Authority has stated that they are absolutely impossible to follow. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has said they are very difficult to follow. At the very least, regulations should be brought before us and published before they can become law. None of this has happened. I could go on but I will not. Maybe I will get another chance on Committee Stage.

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