Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have called consistently for a plan from Government on reopening. It was never produced, even though I was told on the airwaves by many Government Members that there was a plan. According to the Government's reaction this week to NPHET's modelling figures, it does not have a plan. It offered another reactive approach which has been an absolute car crash instead of ensuring preventative measures by having a plan in place. We have been hearing for months about the Indian variant, called the Delta variant. Now the Government is considering allowing only fully vaccinated people to eat indoors, whenever that will be. In other words, the Government is considering introducing a medical apartheid, keeping many families from being able to go for a meal together. Then it tells the restaurant sector to come up with the idea on how to do this.

If Government cared to look at how countries which are opened are doing this, it is called antigen testing. They have been doing it since last year and it allows people to eat indoors, stay in hotels and in the workplace and keeps nursing homes and meat factories clear of Covid. It has also allowed HGV workers to continue their work distributing food imports and exports for months when the French requested it. Still NPHET says no to antigen testing. Young, unvaccinated people can work in our pubs and restaurants for hours on end but if they eat indoors, NPHET says they are at risk. This is the 2021 version of the €9 meal. Having destroyed and closed businesses for most of the last 15 months, does the Government really expect the publicans or restaurateurs to check people's vaccination status? Is there any scrutiny of these hare-brained ideas going on inside Cabinet? Of the 44 countries in Europe, we are the only one with a ban on indoor dining, even though the Minister says we have the greatest take-up of vaccine in the EU in the vulnerable age cohorts. We have administrated to date over 4 million vaccines and we are still in a disastrous place.

Despite NPHET's ongoing doom and gloom reports, deaths in Ireland for 2020 were within the usual rates in a given year. Yet NPHET says we could have a surge of 2,000 deaths if we open the pubs. As a matter of extreme urgency, the Government must carry out an international peer review of NPHET's modelling. This has nothing to do with trust. It is because we are outliers in the EU. My constituents in Wexford, young and old, want to know what is different about Ireland, even if the Government does not.

This week's stock response from Government was that it would consider the issues over the coming weeks and come up with a plan. The people thought that is what Government was doing when it announced dates to open. Government should be putting resources into the mechanisms to ensure it happens on the date announced, no matter what the strain and what numbers. We have to live with Covid. We need measures such as a fit for purpose test, trace and isolate system, antigen testing in every village and town pharmacy so people can test for Covid affordably and increased ICU beds. Instead, we just have a shambolic approach. We have no leadership and no plan other than lockdown and delay, delay, delay.

It appears that the decision to cancel communion and confirmation services was not based on NPHET's advice but that is what the Tánaiste said when he announced it. The children who would be attending those services have been in schools with Covid cases and those schools were not closed. Their grandparents have been vaccinated. The churches made preparations to have 50 people at most at the services. However, like young working adults, the people involved cannot have a party because, it appears, they cannot be trusted. The disrespect shown by the Tánaiste and the Government to religious services and the people involved in organising communion and confirmation ceremonies for the past number of months is unforgivable.

I heard the Tánaiste suggest some days ago that we should give away our unused vaccines. A couple of days later, however, he announced continued restrictions because our vaccine roll-out has not been fast enough. It appears from information I have been given, on very reliable authority, that the no-shows at vaccination centres are people who have already been vaccinated by their GP but failed to get a response from the HSE's helpline when they tried to cancel their appointments. The question they want answered is why their vaccination was not recorded on a system that correlates data on vaccination centres and GP patients, and what system is in place to record vaccinations if certification of same is needed.

I have had people contact me who are in the 60 to 69 years of age category and have passed the eight-week period without receiving a text calling them to attend for their second jab. Others have told me they were contacted and asked why they did not turn up for their second jab, even though they did not receive a text calling them for it. When they explained this to the HSE operative, they were told this is happening a lot. What was initially a vaccine roll-out based on prioritising vulnerable and older cohorts then became just an age-based roll-out, going from the oldest in the population to the youngest, who are being left until last because they are not at any great risk. Now it appears that a choice is to be made between giving a second jab to the older cohort or a first jab to the younger population. When NPHET asked NIAC about this and got an answer, NPHET did not even factor that answer into its modelling.

There are serious questions to be answered on this issue. The answer is not to attack the people asking those questions as conspiracy theorists. Nor is it to create an environment in which vaccinated people are pitted against those who are not vaccinated. It is very important to understand that not all of those who will not take the vaccine are anti-vaxxers. There are genuine medical reasons for not taking a vaccine. I have a constituent who suffers from an allergy that causes anaphylactic shock, for which he has been hospitalised in the past. The health authorities will not give him the vaccine and, as such, I take it he will not be able to eat indoors in restaurants or pubs. I have also spoken to a number of people who are home from the United Arab Emirates visiting their families. They have been vaccinated but the vaccine they received, Sinopharm, is not recognised by the Government or NPHET. Those people will not be able to eat indoors in restaurants or pubs.

Being vaccinated is voluntary, as has been stated at all times. There are people who will not, as opposed to cannot, take the vaccine. Why point them out and ostracise them? It is a very dangerous precedent to set. In the course of its vaccine roll-out, the Government has yet to meet any vaccination target. Who has been held to account for this? Has anyone lost his or her job because of it? In fact, the only people who have lost their jobs are the hundreds of thousands of workers in the hospitality industry who have seen their jobs and livelihoods destroyed by a disorganised, NPHET-controlled Government. The power of decision-making must rest with the individual because the Government, it seems, has completely lost the plot.

The issue raised on last night's "Prime Time" programme will come as no surprise to the Minister as I emailed him about it months ago. While the HSE had a recruitment embargo in place coming into the Covid period, it thought nothing of instituting a recruitment drive to poach staff from nursing homes and leave them bereft. Facing staff shortages in the teeth of a storm, nursing homes were told by the HSE that they would not be receiving assistance to address this problem, which was caused by the HSE itself. I very much hope that issue will be considered pertinent and relevant to the inquiry we will have to see into what happened in nursing homes, both public and private.

See this speech in context