Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The pandemic is unfair, as are viruses and, sometimes, science. Older people have borne the brunt of the pandemic by quite a distance with regard to illness, hospitalisation and deaths. Younger people have borne the brunt economically with regard to the impact on their incomes and on their freedoms. At the start of this pandemic, we told older people that they were the most vulnerable and asked them to please cocoon, to stay inside and not to go out. They did that. It was unfair but it was the right thing to do. We are now telling people who are not vaccinated, who are mostly, although not only, younger people, that they are now the most vulnerable and we are asking them to avoid socialising and congregating indoors for the next couple of weeks until we get them vaccinated. That is what we are saying. We are doing it for a good reason, backed by public health advice and science.

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