Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to these amendments. This is an important debate. The people of Ireland have experienced a lot of anxiety and have had an awful lot to put up with. They are saying in their droves that they do not want the Minister for Health or the Government to be given a blank cheque to continue at will without having to consult us, as legislators, or them, the people. The fact is that people have had an awful lot to contend with financially, mentally and in every other aspect of their lives. We all agree that at the start of the pandemic it was right that certain measures had to be put in place. A pandemic of this nature had never before occurred in modern times. It took extreme measures to deal with and contain it. There is a point at which all that must stop. The Government, just as it is doing in regard to the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Bill 2021, is going so far east it is going west.

I will give some examples. I spoke this week to the Taoiseach on the floor of the Dáil with regard to mental health and suicide and the affects on people in terms of what they are going through. I am not for one moment saying that the suicides which are occurring are a direct or indirect result of the pandemic, the lockdown or the lack of social contact that people have had. What I am saying is that we have to look at everything in the round. We have to look at the bigger picture. There are things that the Government should be doing to help people that it is not doing.

My colleagues in the Rural Independent Group and I have put forward amendments and I am supporting other amendments that have been tabled. I am not supporting the Bill, however, because I have studied it and it can be only described as a blank cheque for the Government. I cannot for the life of me understand how, for example, Deputies from County Kerry could support the Bill and give the Government a blank cheque. If they were listening to the people in Kerry, they would hear what they are saying. They are saying, "Enough is enough" and "We have done enough." They have put their shoulders to the wheel, but business owners are on their knees, be it hoteliers, shopkeepers, small traders, hairdressers, beauticians or the various categories of tradespeople who have worked hard to build up their businesses and who have been held back for so long. They are suffering financially and mentally, as are their families. They have been through a lot. On a daily basis, and as late as this evening, they have been saying to me: "For God's sake, will you tell them above there that enough is enough, we want to get back to normal and we do not want the Government to be able to come along at any time and do what it did in the past and go over the top."

I have seen at first hand, as I am sure has every other Deputy here, bereaved families, brothers and sisters, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces sitting in their cars in the yards of churches watching the burial mass for their grandfather or grandmother on their mobile phones while there were only ten people in the church. I challenge the person from NPHET who recommended to Government that only ten people should be allowed in the cathedral in Killarney. For God's sake, it did not make sense. The people officiating at those masses, the priests, were repeatedly saying that it did not make sense because they were on the altars looking down into the churches and they could see what ten people looked like. It was an act of insanity on the part of this Government to put that restriction in place. It was grossly wrong, highly offensive and it will never be forgotten by the families involved. They will never forgive Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party or anybody else who thought it was a good idea to support those parties in doing that because they were denied the right to have be at the burial masses for their loved ones and they cannot get a second chance in that regard. That was the case up until very recently. Nobody could look me in the eye and tell me that that was right or proper or that it was in the interests of public health. It was absolute nonsense of the highest order that only ten people were allowed into the cathedral in Killarney. It would take a person a long time to find ten people in that cathedral. It was crazy. No matter how many times the Government was told that what is was doing was wrong, it would not listen. There are plenty of other examples, but this is an example in the extreme because that is a time in a person's life that he or she cannot get back. For young people who loved their grandparents and lost one of them during that time it was deeply upsetting, highly offensive and wrong.

We listened to the so-called experts and we put up with an awful lot from them. They are now the prophets of doom and gloom. We have all seen the tweets over the last couple of days. Let us consider what the Government is now telling people. The Government would want to stop talking out of both sides of its mouth. I will give an example of a contradiction. The Government said recently that this summer is to be a summer of outdoor activities, eating and drinking. Everything is to happen outdoors. Yet, it is shutting down outdoor areas the length and breadth of the country by putting up barriers. It is hiring barriers and buying barriers such that there is a scarcity of barriers in the country. It is using those barriers to close off green areas and parks. It is using them to segregate and close off places outdoors. For God's sake, where is the intelligence in that? Does Government not realise that in doing that, it will push people into other places where there will then be larger congregations. We need to allow people to spread out. I have seen what is being done in Dublin. It is crazy. It is an overreaction. What genius thinks we can save people by closing off a particular place or that that will stop them going to another place? The Government needs to make up its mind. Is this the summer of the outdoors or is Government telling the people that it is going to shut down the outdoors because it wants them to stay indoors? The Government needs to make up its mind. Could it do the opposite and trust the people, be it young people, the middle-aged or the elderly, to do the right thing? I trust the people. I trust the publicans in a way Government did not trust them. They remain closed because Government does not trust them. I believe that publicans are probably the most trustworthy and reliable people. I will explain why. They run public houses in respect of which they have to go before the courts every year for a licence to operate. Not many people in business have to do that every year. Publicans have to be respectable, reliable and dependable families. I use the word "families" because the majority of pubs and hotels are family businesses. They are highly respected in their communities. They work with the people and they provide a nice, friendly service in a warm atmosphere for them. They should have been allowed to reopen their businesses a long time ago. I will explain why. It would have helped to stop the spread if every place had been open because we might not have had people congregating in one place.

There might not have been the parties where the virus did spread, had young people not all been in one place and had they more opportunities to go to different places. However, the Government was hell-bent on going down the road of total control and total manipulation.

The killing thing about it is that the Government wants, on 2 June, to continue to do the same thing and to be given ongoing powers by way of this legislation. I really hope that enough people do not support this Bill. I hope some of the amendments that have been put forward will be supported. From this day forward, the Government should not be given any more continuing powers. I do not agree with the different dates being put forward by different groupings. The day should be now. These powers should stop now and the people should be trusted to do the right thing by themselves, which I know they will do. I could say a lot more but I would like the opportunity to speak on other amendments later.

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