Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Pre-legislative scrutiny is becoming a quaint memory, is it not? Legislation is being rammed through the Dáil with no pre-legislative scrutiny. I am here today and very conscious of the seriousness of Covid-19. It was announced that 783 people have it today, 73 people are in hospital of whom 20 are in ICU. That is an increase on yesterday. I was firmly behind a zero approach and make no apology for it but here we are, putting legislation through. As I said earlier today, we have now exposed the fallacy of us all being in this together. That is gone by the window.

We are bringing in this and "Scrap Saturday", "Callan's Kicks" and many other shows come to mind. They do not need to make it up any more, they just need to take the script straight from the Dáil. We have no Bill's digest. The Bill's digest had to confine itself to giving us extracts from the various papers. The Minister is asking us to pass this today, which will give more extraordinary powers and the Minister will have extraordinary powers, under regulations, to increase the numbers of premises, designate officials and so on.

I am staying out of the minutiae for a minute because I do not have the time. I will stopping at 11 minutes. What I want to say is that the Minister has ignored the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties wrote to the Minister in June. It has drawn up a number of documents. It has pointed out the importance of human rights assessment and assessing each legislative item and how it should be focused, targeted, certain and foreseeable. All of this is gone by the window. This is serious because the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and the policing authorities have repeatedly told us that people were on board. The Policing Authority told us the people of Ireland were on board and did not need enforcement actions. In fact, they were 99% compliant before any enforcement.

It is extraordinary that the more we vaccinate, the more we use enforcement. That is an appalling scenario, with no pathway out. If the Minister is reopening restaurants and pubs, he should reopen them when it is safe to do so and at reduced capacity. Ventilation and many other practical measures should be brought into that. We should have resourced public health in each county and region. We do not hear from any of them.

The Minister is here today and I find it very difficult to have any empathy or understanding. I have lost all trust in the democratic system. All we have in the end is democracy, however weak it is. I am a democratic through and through, but to be asked to put this legislation through in this manner with absolutely no basis to it and no human rights assessment is beyond my language. I have no words to convey the hopelessness, except to say to the people who are sensible that I believe in them. They have the power. As my colleague said, let us comply with public health guidance by washing our hands, masking and keeping a distance. Vaccination is part of that, but it always must be voluntary, never discriminatory and never on the basis the Minister is introducing. He is undermining trust and the democratic process.

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