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

I will be dividing the time in half between me and Deputy O'Donoghue from Limerick.

At the outset, I thank the people who work in the offices of the Rural Independent Group for their excellent work in helping to present this important and timely motion. I also want to thank Deputy Nolan for introducing it and Deputy Mattie McGrath for his work.

Our group in general want to make a point of great importance clear because it has been thrown at me a number of times that we now are saying we do not want the hospitality to open fully. Nothing could be further from the truth. The strongest advocate for the opening of this sector has been the Rural Independent Group. To be clear, our motion calls on the Government to immediately allow for the reopening of all indoor hospitality to everyone, whether vaccinated or not and if approved, all indoor hospitality could be reopened from next Thursday.

My first comment at the outset, and the Minister of State is aware that I am not being personally critical of her in the slightest, is that if one takes what happened yesterday, I wonder what has gone wrong in the Government. It simply cannot start off in the morning to give a clear cohesive message because one Minister is going on one radio station saying one thing, another Minister goes on another radio station saying another thing, completely contradicting each other, and the public is then expected to buy into that to say that this is all right. This is totally confusing. I may not blame the Ministers 100% because perhaps they are confused, busy or have a great deal on their plate. I will ask one thing, however. What are the advisers doing? If advisers cannot get their story right in the morning in order to have the Government giving a message out for the day and imparting information properly, what in the name of God are they being paid for? The Irish people will start asking what are the advisers doing if this is the way they present a Government message because from a PR point of view, yesterday's events were a complete disaster for the Government.

I want our hospitality sector to be allowed to open. It can do so safely. We have highly responsible people. I come from the tourism capital of the world, County Kerry. We do tourism better than anyone else and we are not boasting about it; it is just a simple matter of fact. The rest of the country, the rest of Europe and the rest of the world follow what we do in County Kerry because we are excellent at it. The reason is that the people who own hotels, guest houses, pubs and cafés have been at it for generations, including their parents and grandparents. If one takes the town of Killarney, since the visit of Queen Victoria the expertise has just grown and grown and is oozing out of them. They want to be given the opportunity to open to everyone.

I do not like this system of divisiveness. Later on tonight what will happen will create a divide in society and a disturbance that we have never had before, in that people can be asked about their medical records. It happened yesterday on the Plinth where both Deputy Mattie McGrath and I were asked a question. I do not blame the reporter in the slightest, as it was good that the questions was asked. He asked us personal questions about our own health status, which is something that could never be seen, dreamed of, or thought of as something that would happen previously. At the same time, that journalist thought that it was fine to ask the question. Again, I am not blaming the journalist. It was good that he did so and I thanked him for doing so because it showed that is what we will be facing. When I say “we”, I mean we as a society, as this is what we will be facing in the coming days, weeks and months. That is wrong. It is wrong that it would happen to any person - be it an individual or Members - that what I will call the State can ask questions like that.

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