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

I believe this to be a very poor approach by the Government. There is something quite undemocratic about an approach that takes a Bill to do with licensing, outdoor drinking and so on and that includes in that Bill an increase in the number of High Court judges. It means that it is not the focal point of the debate and discussion. Something that is not urgent and which should be part of a proper discussion is being stuck into urgent legislation. It is a very poor approach by the Government.

On the thrust and the main essence of this legislation, we agree that dealing with this issue is necessary. It is a sign of an extreme lack of preparation, not just pre-pandemic as this pandemic has been with us for more than one year, that we need legislation to deal with this to ensure there are no legal issues with people drinking in these extended outdoor areas. This legislation is necessary but we should have done it a year ago, in advance of summer 2020, as opposed to summer 2021. Here we are, yet again. We agree that this is welcome, it being an outdoor summer and all of that. There is a tendency, however, for this outdoor summer to be out of doors in privatised spaces where one must pay for an alcoholic drink, a coffee or whatever to be able to be there. There is a real lack of focus by the Government on providing public common spaces where anybody can go without payment to a private business. This has been encapsulated in quite an extreme way with the square at Portobello. I was also in St. Stephen's Green one day recently and all of the bandstands are currently closed up. These obvious and safe places for people to gather and to be outside are closed off for people. While I am in favour of facilitating businesses having the outdoor spaces, it is a very poor approach to facilitate only businesses that provide such outdoor public spaces and that the State would not provide quality public common spaces.

Such spaces include public parks. There have been some improvements in some parks but we still have issues relating to an ongoing lack of investment in capital facilities over an extended period and in the recruitment of staff, such as park rangers. We have issues with bins overflowing and an absence of toilets and public seating places in many of our parks. Over a year into a pandemic, this is not what we should be facing.

On the broader issue, which clearly is a focal point of this discussion, there has been a lot of nonsense spoken both inside and outside the Dáil over the past 24 hours. People have been giving the impression that we should have just ploughed on and opened indoor hospitality on 5 July and everything would have been fine. Here, many backbench Government Deputies have been engaging in it as well as others. They have been saying we should have just ploughed ahead. If we check the record, we will see they are the same people who last October and November were saying it was outrageous and that we should have been opening up hospitality. The reopening happened at the end of November and in the early part of December and it had consequences. People can read the contribution sent by Deputy MacSharry to the Taoiseach in October, when there were 1,000 cases a day. Eventually, the advice given and pressure exerted by those to whom I refer was heeded by the Government. We opened up and 1,000 people died in January and a further 1,000 died in February. There is a correlation between these two things. The reopening of hospitality was a disastrous decision that resulted in many lives being lost.

It is true that it would not be the same if we reopened on 5 July. It would not be the same because vaccination would take the edge off it. However, we must also recognise where we are at. We are behind the North, England, Scotland and Wales in terms of vaccination. The majority of people in the South have either had one dose of vaccine or have not been vaccinated. This means they are quite vulnerable to the Delta variant. Again, the most vulnerable have been vaccinated but not all of them have been fully inoculated as a result of the gap between doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Even if we are speaking about younger people, we are still talking about hospitalisation, long Covid and either hundreds or more than 1,000 deaths as a result of the decision to open up and let it rip.

This is not an abstract discussion. We can look north. In the North, we can look at the date that indoor hospitality was opened and ten days later we can see sharp increases, which are continuing, in the numbers of cases and hospitalisations. These will likely translate into increased deaths in the coming period. To have opened up on 5 July would have been a disastrous decision. We have no alternative but not to open up. The consequence of opening up would not only have increased the numbers of cases, long Covid, hospitalisations and deaths, but would also likely have caused a need to go into reverse and begin to close things down, not only indoor hospitality but probably also outdoor hospitality. This is the reality of what going down the road would have meant. It is not a road the vast majority of people would want to go down. People really could not stomach going into another lockdown.

I want to make a point on the outsized role played by business owners and the owners of restaurants and pubs in public debate. There is no question that they should be listened to and there is no question that they should be part of the debate. There is no question the Government should be taking measures to ensure small pub and restaurant owners are not impacted badly by this but I want to know where are the workers' representatives? Did the Government meet workers' representatives today? Where are the workers in the media? Where are the young workers who will be asked in the Government's scenario to come in and serve vaccinated and unvaccinated people and put themselves significantly at risk? The idea of opening, in terms of unvaccinated young people being asked to serve the vaccinated, simply will not work. It is not a workable option.

There was an alternative. Nobody else in the Dáil or in politics was calling from it apart from the socialist left. More than one month ago, People Before Profit warned that we were in a race between the variant and the vaccine. Not only did we give a warning, we provided an alternative and a way of avoiding the situation and getting ahead in the race, which would have been to move to mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers from England, Scotland and Wales a month ago. If we had done this we could have protected our reopening and we possibly could have gone ahead with 5 July. However, the Government did not go down that road. In effect, it accepted it was inevitable that the Delta variant would spread and that we could not even slow it down and give our vaccinators a chance to get on top of it.

This morning, I raised the following point with the Tánaiste at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. It is quite incredible that we are more than a year into a pandemic and that the Government's plan is to open up and compel unvaccinated young workers to go into hospitality settings and serve people while there are no legally enforceable guidelines on ventilation. The thing we have learned about Covid over the course of the past year is how airborne it is and how important ventilation is. The Tánaiste admitted that there are no enforcement mechanisms. We have voluntary guidelines for indoor hospitality issued by Fáilte Ireland and the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, in conjunction with the HSE. We have a new version of the work safely protocol. We have many references to good things that should be done in terms of ventilation but they have no legal basis. They are just a collection of voluntary public health advice. We should have maximum CO2 levels laid down in law and monitored. Let us provide or subsidise CO2 monitors for pubs, hotels, restaurants and all the rest, and then monitor them and state the levels have to be below a certain point and proper ventilation measures have to be put in place. It is somewhat incomprehensible that we have reached this point and we do not have a law on ventilation, particularly when one considers how important it is in terms of workers' health and safety.

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