Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely agree that absolute power is never healthy but I think the Minister has done well on this by standing by what he believes in when it comes to quarantine. I agree with him. My difficulty is it should have been brought in last year and that when it was brought in this year, that happened as a result of pressure and in a way that was destined not to succeed. There was no oversight, it was outsourced, there was no human rights impact assessment and, today, no details.

I welcome the Minister's contribution. He told us that 4,400 people have gone through mandatory hotel quarantine and that 173 cases have been detected. He gave us a breakdown of those cases and stated that they involved 163 residents, nine staff – which is significant and raises questions as to how the staff contracted it – and one accompanied minor. Significantly also, 59 variants of concern cases have been detected. For that alone, quarantine was worth it. My difficulty is the manner in which it has been conducted. I have great difficulty with that. Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that detention should never be arbitrary. There is an extra onus on the Government because we are detaining people. I could quote many European Court of Human Rights judgments but there is one which states that "where deprivation of liberty is at stake, the interests of justice in principle call for legal representation". The Minister has given us no figures today on the number of appeals, how they were handled, whether there is consistency in those appeals or whether the humanitarian grounds exception is being applied consistently. There is absolutely no information in respect of any of them.

I was aghast to hear Deputy Jim O’Callaghan saying that, when we look back, we will say we handled it well. Whatever about in the beginning when there was a certain level of ignorance and uncertainty, there was none by the summertime when we utterly failed to plan for the third wave. The figures are shocking. The figure for January to May of this year is 2,704 deaths. Most of those occurred between January and March.

That is in comparison with all of last year, when we had 2,237 deaths in total. We had most of the deaths in the first few months of this year and we utterly failed to plan for it or to take action. We brought in quarantine under pressure and in a manner that is not compliant with our legal obligations nationally and internationally. I do not know why we have to go through freedom of information and parliamentary questions to find out. There is an onus on the Government to inspire confidence so that we can work with it. I say that as someone who agrees with mandatory quarantine as a last resort, but we should have done it last year at the beginning of the pandemic. We would be in a very different space had we done so.

I have the greatest trouble with Deputies revising or changing history. We utterly failed to protect vulnerable people in nursing homes, in direct provision and in meat plants. I might have failed as well had I been in government, but I do not think I would have failed to learn from the mistakes. It is simply unacceptable to be still making mistakes.

See this speech in context