Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are talking about extending a safety net for about 11 weeks on the advice of Chief Medical Officer and I believe all of us will agree that he has advised us well. A reasonable argument has been made by colleagues that if this is needed, Deputies could come back to the House and legislate. I want to take us back to what happened in the week before Christmas last year to show how quickly this can move. It was on the Friday evening in the week before Christmas that the UK Government signalled that it had serious concerns about a variant of concern, namely, the Alpha variant. We worked right through the weekend, as one would expect, and the Government met the following Monday and Tuesday. We made very serious decisions so quickly because they were required quickly. If it had been necessary to draft new legislation, bring it before both Houses, have it debated, passed and then approved by the President, I believe all Deputies will accept that there is no way we could have done that by that Monday or Tuesday. With the best will in the world, that would not have been possible.

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