Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I begin by apologising to Deputy Kelly. We did not mean to interrupt. Deputy Tóibín and I were agreeing that there were more U-turns on display here tonight than anyone would see at a Garda checkpoint.

The Minister was asked a straight question as to whether he would be accepting any Opposition amendments. He said he would like to listen to the discussion on all of the amendments and then make an informed decision. I would like to believe that is the case but, unfortunately, as someone who understands how Dáil and Oireachtas procedure works, I cannot.

Yesterday, there was a vote to guillotine this Bill. That means we stop considering amendments and take a vote on the overall Bill after 150 minutes, regardless of whether amendments have been considered. That decision did not come out of nowhere because that is not how things work here. The Chief Whip to the Government - the Minister is a member of Government, so the Chief Whip is the Chief Whip to the Minister - went into the Business Committee and the guillotine was agreed. I doubt it was agreed without debate but, ultimately, whatever the Government proposes is accepted after it is debated because the Government has the numbers. The Chief Whip said we would guillotine the Bill and we would not debate all amendments because the Government could not be bothered. The view was that it was a nice night and they would go for pints as the lads wanted to enjoy themselves. They have had a difficult winter, so to hell with debate. That is how we got here tonight.

It was disingenuous of the Minister to say he would listen to amendments because we are not going to reach them. There are 60 amendments. I have no doubt the House will accept the Minister's amendments because that is what happens, but we will not be accepting Opposition amendments. That was the question Deputy Denis Naughten put to the Minister.

There is a broader issue with these amendments. I am not convinced that the issue is whether we extend these powers by six months, three months or four months. The issue is more the absolute power to make amendments that lies with the Minister. I cannot accept these amendments. I would accept the amendments tabled by Sinn Féin and the Technical Group - I proposed a similar amendment - but, again, I do not believe they will be reached. Those amendments require explicit Dáil backing for any regulations the Minister introduces. That is real democratic oversight. In the case of my amendment, the proposal was for affirmation to be made within ten sitting days as opposed to ten days. The Minister could not say there could be an emergency during the summer and the Dáil might be unable to sit or that he would have to bring in regulations. He could not say the heavens might fall, the Dáil would not be able to sit to affirm the regulations and, therefore, they would fall and we would have chaos because no one would know what they were doing and it would be awful. That would not arise. It would mean, however, that the Dáil would have to consider the Minister's regulations and affirm them.

Even in the hands of a competent Minister for Health, these powers are dangerous and I would oppose them since they have been used in the past to restrict rights, potentially unlawfully and unconstitutionally.

When this State was founded, we copied the UK Parliament. We take most of our procedure from the House of Commons, just as we take the procedure in our courts from the courts that predated ours. The House of Commons Joint Committee on Human Rights considered this matter and stated it was glad that it was explicit that religious organisations could practise. They could open the doors of their churches, say masses and hold Sunday service. Synagogues and mosques could open. Religious organisations were expected to behave responsibly and they did. In fact, many did not open the doors of their houses of worship because they believed it would be dangerous or irresponsible to do so or they took the view that, in accordance with the tenets of their faith, it was unnecessary to do so. Nevertheless, they were allowed to do so. The Commons Human Rights Committee stated that was a good thing because to have done otherwise would be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. It stated that a similar level of clarity was lacking on the right to peaceful assembly and protest.

I believe we have a lack of clarity around both issues and I have raised both with the Minister repeatedly. In October, the Minister, who was sitting where he is sitting now, took umbrage when I suggested it would be a penal offence for a priest to say mass in public. The regulations said it was an offence to leave home without reasonable excuse and that a reasonable excuse in respect of a minister or priest - I am fairly certain those were the words used in the regulation - included saying mass but only if it was online. By extension, saying mass in public was not a reasonable excuse and in saying mass in public or carrying out another religious ceremony, a priest was committing a criminal offence. The Minister explicitly stated in the Dáil that he had read the regulations the previous night and assured me it was not a penal offence and would remain thus. That regulation lapsed in December when we were all having the meaningful Christmas that the National Public Health Emergency Team dreamt up. It was a disastrous campaign to justify an unnecessary lockdown at the start of October. Then the regulations were reintroduced in January word for word, comma for comma, line for line. The regulations the Minister said did not contain a penal offence were challenged in our courts and legal counsel for the Government - the Government's legal representatives - clarified to the court that it was a penal offence to say mass in public.

That concerns me on several levels. It concerns me that we are potentially infringing constitutional rights and it concerns me even more that the Minister assured the House that it was not a penal offence. He said he had read the regulations, knew what he was doing and that what was being suggested by the Opposition was simply wrong. Then the Minister's lawyers clarified the exact opposite to the courts.

Did the Minister read the regulations the night before, as he told the House, or did he not read them the night before? If he read them, did he not understand them? If he did not understand them, did he not take legal advice on them? How did we arrive at a situation in which the polar opposite of what the Minister assured the House was the case came to be the Government's position in the courts? If the Minister did not understand what he was signing with regard to religious freedom, how are we to believe that he understood what he was signing with regard to the impact the regulations would have on any of the panoply of rights that exist and that inhere in all human beings the State? I am referring to the rights in the Constitution that the constitutional order is here to protect.

I raised this matter before and the Minister said he did not understand the question. I will be simple. Did the Minister tell fibs to the House with respect to the fact that he read the regulations and understood the regulations or their import?

Surely, it was one of the three. The great powers the Minister has under these regulations make me very uneasy. As I have said, were Deputy Donnelly an entirely competent Minister, I would still be uneasy but I say with sadness that, unfortunately, he has demonstrated otherwise on the floor of this House. I invited the Minister to explain the scenario. I invited him to retract what he said and explain how this came about but he declined to do so. Now here he is saying, "Trust me, guys", using the lingo of certain management consultants. It is a bit like saying "Trust me, I'm a doctor", if the Ceann Comhairle will pardon the pun.

We have heard NPHET mentioned. NPHET called for most of these powers. We have seen NPHET give public health advice. I do not have a problem with that per se. We need somebody to give the Government public health advice and who is better placed to do so than the Chief Medical Officer? However, advice as to whether restrictions should be policed and how they should be policed and advice as to whether people should be allowed to gather together is not really public health advice. These are State matters. I am concerned NPHET has overstepped the limits of its function massively. NPHET is led by the Chief Medical Officer. It is obvious why he and the deputy chief medical officer are on the team but there are others on it as well.

I have been contacted by many doctors from across this State over the past six months. They work in public hospitals with people who have contracted Covid. They are working in very difficult circumstances but completely oppose the position Deputy Donnelly has advocated as Minister for Health. Not only has he put forward and advocated for his position but he has made it a criminal offence not to agree with it. It is not democratic that he can do so at the stroke of a pen without being accountable to any committee or either House. Let me phrase it differently. The Minister knows when a regulation is going to expire, because it is written within the regulation. He therefore knows if he will need to introduce another regulation in a week or two, if the advice from NPHET is that it is necessary. Why then would the Minister not want to go before a committee and tease it out so that it can be clearly understood what is or is not a penal offence? In a democracy, why would he not want to tease that out? I simply do not understand why that would be so, unless the Minister has a tendency towards authoritarianism. That does not just worry me, but frightens me.

I come from a part of the country that is very proud of its tradition and tendency towards freedom and the protection of freedom, which it had for a long time before the end of British rule in this State and has had for a long time since British rule ended. Many made the ultimate sacrifice. In fact, some of those who did so could not even be commemorated because of the pandemic. I am not suggesting it would have been right to have had large commemorations. On the contrary, I would not feel comfortable in a large crowd at the moment. What I am saying is that it is wrong to impose public health advice through criminal law and it is even more wrong to do so by way of delegated legislation. It is still more wrong to remove any possibility of checks and balances being applied in this House and to prevent the House looking at what is being done.

Last week, last month and last year, I asked whether we had any idea of the mental health impacts of these restrictions or of their impact on suicides. I note that last week the Central Statistics Office announced the number of deaths and the number of suicides that occurred last year that had been recorded as of 22 May. I may be mistaken as to the particular date but it was certainly in May. Thankfully, the number of suicides was down on the previous year. However, that does not really tell us much. Deaths have to be recorded within three months in Ireland and the vast majority are. It can, however, sometimes take a lot longer to record the cause of death. Sometimes, a coroner's court must rule. Of course, all courts, including the coroners' courts, faced long delays last year. There is therefore a delay in establishing the cause of certain deaths. I hope that the number of suicides was down in 2020 but the information we have to hand only says that the number of suicides in 2020 recorded as of May was down. They are two entirely different things.

It is interesting the number of deaths recorded was up on the number of deaths recorded in May 2020 in respect of 2019. Again, there could be a delay in recording deaths, although this is less likely because, without meaning to be glib, it is much easier to establish whether somebody is alive or dead than it is to establish the cause of death. The deaths of most people who died in 2020 will therefore have been recorded by May. Even if there had been a delay, provided the delay in both years was similar, the number of deaths had increased by 600. That is about 2% of total deaths. I have lost more people who were close to me than many of my age will have so I know what it is like to grieve for a loved one. I know how awful it is but, equally, I know that I have to go on living for the living. I do not wish to minimise the deaths of these 600 people, as they are very important, but I wish to point out that the number was only up 600, or 2%, on the previous year. The same increase in deaths took place between 2017 and 2018 as took place between 2019 and 2020. This again causes me to question not whether there is a pandemic, because there clearly is, and not whether people need to be cautious, because they clearly do, but whether some of the restrictions that were put in place and some of the public health measures policed by An Garda Síochána were necessary, proportionate or advised. It does cause me to question that.

Deputy Paul Murphy has drawn considerable attention to an issue in respect of fines. It is hardly surprising but most of the fines have been handed out in a couple of areas in the State. Towards the end of last summer, I warned we were effectively penalising poverty through some of these Covid restrictions. That is what we have done. It was not in Greystones or east Clare that the number of fines was high but in parts of the country which the State has consistently failed, parts where people are poor. That is where fines were issued. It will be interesting to see whether they will be paid because there are all sorts of constitutional frailties in much of this legislation.

At the start, Deputy Naughten said we gave the police powers to do all of this last March. We did not. We incrementally gave the Minister more powers, rather than fewer, as the year went on. We were acting blindly in March 2020 but it was in October, through the Health (Amendment) Act 2020, that we gave the police powers to issue lots of fines. Those powers were subsequently increased. Then mandatory hotel quarantine was introduced after Christmas, which was a fiasco. Rather interestingly, the Minister himself has said that, if the mandatory hotel quarantine regime had been in place before Christmas, it would not have stopped what happened at Christmas. I found that astounding because, if it would not have stopped what happened at Christmas, what was the point? What we have done has made Belfast International Airport a success story after many years of stagnation while Shannon Airport, which was enjoying some nascent success after facing some difficulties, has plummeted.

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