Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday New Zealand admitted zero-Covid was not workable. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was big enough to admit she was wrong. Here, the supporters of zero-Covid have so far remained completely silent. The Social Democrats, People Before Profit-Solidarity, the Labour Party and even Sinn Féin, at some stage, were ardent supporters of the idea of zero-Covid. The Social Democrats went so far as to say everything should be shut down until we got lower than ten cases per day. On that logic, we would still be in full lockdown. The fact the majority of the opposition parties in this Dáíl supported that policy gave the Government a blank cheque to implement the most severe and costly restrictions seen in the whole of Europe. The opposition parties offered no challenge to the Government and no critique of the extreme outlier policy pursued by the Government. Real opposition is critically important for a functioning democracy. If we do not have that there is a major chance of seeing big, extreme policy swings within the country.

The Minister has stated Ireland is not alone in this crisis but Ireland is alone in the way it managed this crisis. The Minister spoke about protecting public health but the majority of people who died of Covid caught it in a nursing home or hospital. These are the two areas that are either owned or managed by the Government. The major weakness in the battle against Covid was the lack of accident and emergency and ICU bed capacity. This was a political choice by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for generations. While the Minister's Government is trying to extend what is probably the most draconian legislation Europe has seen on the basis there is still an outstanding threat, his Department, his Government and his HSE are actually seeking to close ICU and accident and emergency beds in Our Lady's Hospital, Navan today. How can anybody get their heads around the fact there is a policy to close accident and emergency and ICU beds at this juncture in our battle against Covid?

Covid is a real illness and there is no doubt the management of it is a very difficult issue but no other country in Europe imposed restrictions as long or severe as Ireland did. The consequences have been massive for the country. Health waiting lists have surged from 741,000 people to 907,000 in that two-year period. Tens of thousands of patients have gone without diagnoses or treatment, many of them with life-threatening illnesses. Ireland, Saudi Arabia and North Korea were the three countries that banned public religious services in this period. For the first quarter of this year, 10,000 homes were not built. Ireland had the biggest housing crisis in Europe and was the only country that prohibited the building of houses in the first quarter of this year. Ireland has spent €41 billion on Covid-related costs over the past two years. This is a massive figure. It is comparable to the bank bailout. We saw a 21% increase in expenditure last year. The European average was 10%. Countries like France spent 5% extra. That massive difference in expenditure by the State was not down to Covid. If we were dealing with Covid in the same manner as other European countries, we would have been at the European average. We were double the European average when it came to that expenditure.

The extension of these radical and draconian restrictions is wrong but it also shows the Government and the Opposition have learned nothing with regard to this. We need a full, independent and public investigation into the Government's handling of Covid over these past two years.

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