Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

“To delete the words ‘9th day of January, 2022’ and to substitute the words ‘22nd day of October, 2021’ therefor.”.

The purpose of the amendment is to try to reach a compromise in this regard. We are all very concerned about the extent of the emergency powers that the Government took upon itself over the past couple of years when responding to the pandemic. Many of us were very clear about expressing our concerns and certainly on the last occasion we debated this legislation, I and others expressed very strong concern about the approach that has been taken to requiring people to be vaccinated on entering hospitality and the discriminatory aspect of that. It really was a first that admission was going to be granted to people on the basis of health status, and we had not had anything like that before.

We are now in a situation where, thankfully, the omens are good, there has been a very high level of compliance among the public and enormous effort has been put in at the level of the public in terms of adhering to the advice, the public health advice in particular, notwithstanding the fact we had a very high mortality rate. It is important that we recognise those 5,200 people who sadly passed with Covid. It is important that we acknowledge all of the many thousands of people who have been bereaved as a result of that and, in addition, of course, all of the many people, practically everybody in the country, who have been affected by Covid. The national effort was highly commendable. It is also, of course, important to recognise all of those who kept the show on the road in terms of health services, kept our supermarkets open, kept our public transport going and all of that. We should never forget that we owe all of those front-line people right across the board a huge debt of gratitude. We also, of course, have to recognise the incredible work of the HSE in implementing the vaccination programme. That was done very successfully. It has been our saviour and has got us to a point now where we are enjoying many of the normal aspects of life and, hopefully, we will do that to an even greater extent.

That is why all of the indications are that we are on track in terms of the roadmap. Hopefully, everything will go well up to 22 October and most of the outstanding restrictions will be lifted. For that reason, it is very hard to justify why the Government would be seeking to retain such far-reaching emergency powers beyond 22 October.

As others have said, in the event that things go wrong - we all hope sincerely and all the indications are that this will not be the case - there is no difficulty with the Minister coming back in here looking for additional powers or looking to reimpose particular restrictions if the circumstances warrant that but as of now, that is not likely to be the case. It is wonderful that this is the situation.

As a compromise, I am proposing that the power to establish restrictions would only remain with the Government up until the point in the roadmap where most of those restrictions are due to be lifted, that is, 22 October. I ask the Minister to consider that. It is a reasonable proposal that we continue along the road of the roadmap - most people accept that and the vast majority of people are adhering to the requirements under the roadmap - but we expect that in less than three weeks' time, there will not be any need for legislation to underpin the restrictions. I put it to the Minister and ask him to consider this proposal on the clear undertaking that if things do go wrong and if there is a new variant or whatever, there would be full co-operation right across this House in responding to that in an appropriate manner. It is on that basis that I propose this amendment.

Other people have referred to the issue of ventilation. I have been talking about this for a very long time. An expert group was established under NPHET that produced two reports making clear recommendations on ventilation and I simply cannot understand why the Minister is not taking that expert advice. It is extraordinary how lax the whole situation is in relation to ventilation. There is a view taken that we are still talking about cleaning surfaces, washing hands etc. as being the primary way of reducing spread when we have known for a long time that Covid is airborne. For that reason, that should be the primary focus in relation to public health advice. I was flabbergasted that the recent new public health messaging going out in the media did not mention ventilation. It is extraordinary. I cannot understand why that is the case. It is a huge missed opportunity. There also is a lot of justified criticism in relation to the tardiness of being ready in the schools, delays with the CO2 monitors, them not being available to other than mainstream classes, and, of course, the lack of clear advice in relation to that. It is a very urgent matter and it should still be addressed at this point.

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