Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Covid-19 has challenged the country, our society and our economy like never before. With this disease, the country has travelled on a roller coaster journey. It has been a journey of high consequent mortality in the elderly, a hospital intensive care crisis that has tested staff to the limit, deferral of significant other health procedures and activity and lockdown of our population to suppress disease transmission. In addition we agreed to eye-watering economic measures to stabilise our economy and prevent a wholesale bankruptcy for a whole slew of businesses, large and small, in every economic sector of the State. Despite the naked populism decrying scientific analysis and promoting a herd immunity that could be possible only through widespread death and chronic illness, visited across all age groups in our population, science has, in the form of the vaccines, delivered a way out of the abyss. We must be forever grateful to the many scientists and health researchers who worked around the clock for many months to find solutions to some, if not all, of Covid's ravages. As many question the route Ireland took in fighting Covid, we might also note the current experience of New Zealand. After an extended period of operating a largely zero-Covid strategy, it has now decided to move to a vaccination strategy, given the increasing transmission rates of the Delta variant there.

Today we discuss the possible next round of further easing restrictions, while keeping monitoring and surveillance of potential disease resurgence in place, only because the people, as they have done previously, recognised the science and the vaccines' benefits and chose to put their trust in that science. I congratulate the people of my own constituency of Waterford, who have made it the county with the highest vaccination rate in the country. I believe it is also the highest rate in Europe for any administered county area. Thus, not only has County Waterford been recognised as the best place to live in the country, we now also carry the title of safest county in the country as a result of vaccine uptake.

The Minister has outlined that Government is looking to extend the powers of the present Act purely as a safety net. He says it is the Government's intention to fully open and lift all restrictions on indoor hospitality, subject to public health advice, on October 22. While the Government is looking at an extension of the sunset clause, I must voice some concerns about the extension of this legislation. Indeed, I am on the record of the House as supporting an amendment to the previous extension of powers which would shorten the sunset period and then review the data. That amendment was not accepted at the time. The Minister is asking Oireachtas Members to give their support to again extending significant powers to Government while also advising his best guesstimate is these powers will not require invoking beyond 22 October. I have concerns that the rate of transmission, though at low levels on that date, may be still a cause for concern. I have concerns we may not be totally out of the woods even then. That significant reason may describe why we must be able to implement significant infection control and disease-retarding initiatives, as required, by extending this period even further. Should that prove to be the case, the full appropriation of powers Government has been granted to severely limit the movement of people in our State, or designate what personal data they must offer as a result, is a power that cannot be extended again, beyond the Minister's new proposed deadline. Even with future compelling evidence to support ongoing restrictions, the Minister must return to the House with new legislation seeking a new mandate for its implementation past the three-month window he has now proposed.

It would be remiss of me, when given the opportunity, to not commend once more our scientific researchers and our national clinical and healthcare staff across so many of our health services, who have taken the utmost risks with their lives and their health. They stayed at their posts to carry out the duties they were born to do. They represent the very best of what is cherished and desired in any country, people or society. They should feel justifiably proud of their contribution to contemporary Irish history.

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