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

I thank the Deputy. It was not an off-the-cuff remark, by the way; it was an on-the-record response to a question I was asked at a press conference. Those are the facts. What the CMO said yesterday is that NPHET did not recommend the cancellation of communions and confirmations because, in the view of NPHET, they were not supposed to be taking place anyway. We had hoped it would be possible for them to resume after 5 July but that is not the case. The advice from NPHET and the public health doctors and scientists is clear and is that people who are not vaccinated should not gather indoors. Unfortunately, that is what communions and confirmations inevitably involve, namely, people who are not vaccinated gathering indoors and, on some occasions, having family gatherings and parties thereafter and that results in clusters and the spread of Covid. That is the rationale behind the decision but I appreciate it is a big disappointment for a lot of people.

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