Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I will make a number of points. The first is that mandatory hotel quarantine saves lives. It was a crucial part of the zero Covid strategy that was successfully implemented in some countries. The difference in death rates between countries that adopted a variant of that strategy versus those that did not is striking. In New Zealand, there has been a total of 26 deaths. It has a similar population to Ireland where, tragically, we have close to 5,000 deaths. Australia, with a population of 25 million, has had fewer than 1,000 deaths. Even in Ireland, where it was introduced very late by a Government that did not want to introduce it and had many significant flaws in how it was introduced, mandatory hotel quarantine had an impact. The indications are that once mandatory hotel quarantine was introduced, the Brazilian and South African variants effectively disappeared from the island when, before that point, they had been on an upward trend.

Mandatory hotel quarantine works and saves lives. On behalf of People Before Profit, we opposed the Government's mandatory hotel quarantine legislation because, while we were calling for mandatory hotel quarantine, there were many substantial problems with the way the Government introduced it.

There will presumably be a major public inquiry into how the Government handled Covid-19. I believe its outcome will be damning of the Government and of the system of mandatory hotel quarantine and will back up many of the points we made at the time. These include how late mandatory hotel quarantine was introduced, namely, nine and a half months after NPHET first recommended it, and how it was set up, in that it was outsourced to private companies with individuals left to pay the substantial cost themselves. In addition, there was no oversight by public health officials and it was not incorporated into the public health system. There was no oversight or supervision by civil liberties or human rights activists and experts. Even the structure of the legislation prevented mandatory quarantine from being introduced for all countries around the world. These were very substantial problems and they still hold, unfortunately, in what the Government is now proposing. While we favour mandatory hotel quarantine, we oppose the version of it that the Government is seeking to extend.

My final point is an urgent one. It is an appeal to the Government to listen to the very many scientists who are banging the warning drum about the Indian variant. Hospital admissions are now rising in England because of the Indian variant, which appears to be substantially more transmissible. It is particularly concerning for us that the protection offered by one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine is quite limited. One dose seems to be only 33% effective, while two doses are between 80% and 90% effective, or largely effective. We know the Indian variant is here. A week before the cyberattack on the HSE, there were 72 cases of the variant. That figure is likely to have doubled to 150 or more. We also know the Indian variant is the dominant strain in Britain at this time. We are, therefore, in a race against time to complete two doses of vaccines before the Indian variant becomes dominant here. It is a race we are likely to lose unless we take action, and it is very simple. We need to follow the advice that is being given to implement mandatory hotel quarantine at airports and ports for travellers coming from Britain.

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