Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Mandatory hotel quarantine is a tool with which none of us is comfortable but it is one of the tools that has been necessary in our fight against Covid-19 over the last few months. We all know that Covid-19 and its variants do not recognise borders. As stated repeatedly by my colleague and party Leader, Deputy Kelly, this virus is on tour. The arrival of different variants on our shores has shown how unpredictable Covid can be. As stated yesterday by my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, this virus has a habit of making fools of us all.

The vast majority of people accept that mandatory hotel quarantine is not a nice measure but it is necessary. It was brought in to capture the different variants and to ensure that those variants do not come into Ireland in the first instance. People are concerned about the different variants. Those who are in the 60-69 age cohort are particularly anxious as they await the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine to better protect them from the so-called Indian variant. The vast bulk of this age cohort will not be fully vaccinated until August. That is a long time to wait.

As we do not know what is ahead of us, I understand why the Government is seeking to extend the mandatory hotel quarantine system but this measure should be used as a last resort as more people become vaccinated. Like the health regulations that were brought before the House yesterday, the Labour Party does not believe that we can keep extending last-resort measures such as this without proper parliamentary scrutiny. Can the Minister commit to providing a detailed report reviewing the mandatory hotel quarantine system and the checks and balances that are in place? How we approach the system must be recalibrated in line with the initiation of the EU digital certificate system. The Labour Party asks that the principles of the EU digital Covid certificate also be applied to the common travel area and to areas in which vaccination levels are high, such as North America. The Minister will be aware that there are 128 million vaccinated people in the United States at the moment, not just with one shot, but fully vaccinated, and there are 30 million people fully vaccinated in the UK. We have those data sets, and we are aware of this. Rapid antigen testing must play a role here as well. As alluded to by other speakers, Professor Ferguson, the chief scientific adviser, has delivered a strong report on the use of rapid antigen testing. It must play a role, particularly for people returning to Ireland.

It is full steam ahead. We will be keeping the pressure on the Government, but hopefully the penny is finally dropping. We cannot pretend that there have not been concerns about the operation of the mandatory hotel quarantine regime. Many of us will have received feedback from people who have availed of the mandatory hotel quarantine system. They have outlined how mentally taxing it is and, in some cases, the appallingly poor conditions in which they were asked to live, while paying for the privilege. There are some questions on the standards of support and care, if one can call it that, within the system. As the days get longer and, we hope, the weather that bit better, the amount of time people get to spend outside of their rooms, for example, to exercise and so on, must be examined. We know this should be treated as a last-resort measure so we need to make things as easy as possible, and as pleasant as possible - if that is the right term - for people living under these circumstances.

There also needs to be greater agility and flexibility in adding and removing countries to the list. When we know new variants arise, we must be swift in adding countries where they are most dominant to the list. We also must be quick to examine countries where levels of Covid are dropping and vaccination rates are rising and to remove them from the list, on advice. As a Deputy for Louth and east Meath and a resident of my home town of Drogheda, which is approximately half an hour from Dublin Airport, I want to end my remarks on this issue by giving my support to people who work in the aviation sector, who are under extreme financial pressure and are very anxious to get back to the jobs they love. We know that workers in Shannon and Cork airports have lost their jobs. Hopefully, these positions can be recovered but there is an awful lot of despair. We have to acknowledge that and ensure that a great deal of work can be done in the time ahead to not just recover the jobs that have been lost but to maintain the very important jobs that are there at present. I am sure that the aviation sector, which is of strategic and significant importance to us, will be fully protected and supported.

It really is lamentable to see that some of the supports provided to the aviation sector by the Government were not contingent on protecting jobs, preventing lay-offs and ensuring that job conditions were protected, and there will be no forgiveness for this. It is something the Government will never be able to run away from. It is why, in acknowledging the strategic importance of our aviation sector not just to business, enterprise and jobs but its strategic importance to this island nation, we have to be innovative about how we support our aviation sector. One suggestion I made, and which the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has been making, to the Minister for Transport, the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, and others, is to establish, for example, a revised wage subsidy scheme, possibly based on the German model, to ensure the stabilisers are maintained. If it is the case over the coming months that the EWSS is run down, we should embed a German-style wage support scheme in our labour market model to support sectors such as aviation, which will find it difficult to come back to full strength. This is something the Government should consider. It is something I support and I have proposed. It is something that will be important to support the industry.

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