Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am at a bit of a loss as to what this debate is for. What is the point of it? I appreciate that the Ceann Comhairle does not decide how the Government fills its time but what is the point? Nothing new has been announced. We have learned little or nothing and then, towards the end of the term, a load of legislation will be rammed through and it will be because we did not have Dáil time to debate it. There will be no amendments but guillotines and the whole shebang, with contempt for democracy and Parliament and so on.

I have learned two things today, in fairness. One relates to Kilmainham Mills, from Deputy Costello, which I had never heard of before. There is a nice mill in Bow River, just down the road from where I live. If the Minister is ever travelling from Scariff to Mountshannon, she should take the Middleline road and she will see a nice mill.

The other thing I learned was that 90% of passengers coming to Ireland have been vaccinated. Of course they have been, given that there is a considerable disincentive to anyone else coming to Ireland. The proportion of the population of Europe that has been vaccinated is not 90% - nowhere near it. We have the highest vaccination rate in Europe, which is great, but the obvious corollary is that every other country in Europe has a lower vaccination rate. If we want their populations to come, therefore, we will have to accommodate them. We are not accommodating them, however, and we are almost unique in requiring a PCR test. It is difficult to get a PCR test in most countries because they are used only to confirm a clinical diagnosis, so people have to present among sick people who have Covid to get a PCR test if they want to come to Ireland or even to return to Ireland.

Of course, it is not about keeping Ireland safe; it is about being a disincentive to Irish people to travel abroad, and the collateral damage is the tourists who want to come here. Money does not matter any more in this brave new future we have created. We can live off borrowed money indefinitely, if I have got that right. Where are the antigen tests? We heard an awful lot about a project involving the introduction of antigen tests. Where is it? As recently as about two hours ago, Mr. Pádraig Ó Céidigh, the new chairman of Shannon Group, was appearing before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications and he talked about how essential it will be to get in line with the rest of Europe if we want to rejuvenate and revitalise the tourism sector and those who depend on it. I want clarity on that. It is not about keeping Ireland safe but rather about being a disincentive, just as our indoor hospitality policy was not about making the environment safer but rather was intended to coerce people. If it was about keeping people safe, there would have been antigen tests and PCR tests and we would have accepted the EU digital pass in its entirety rather than just the part we could use to coerce people. The same is true of the introduction of mandatory quarantine. What a farce. There was a statement two weeks ago suggesting that on its "successful" conclusion, a total of 593 cases had been detected.

While mandatory quarantine was in being and the 593 cases were being detected, and we will find out in the fullness of time how many euro it cost, there were 151,350 cases detected in Ireland, so it was a drop in the ocean or 0.39% of the total to be precise.

Are we going to have an aviation policy in Ireland at any point soon? Until such time as we have one, it does not really matter whether Shannon Airport is part of the Dublin Airport Authority group. There are State interests competing with each other. There are two runways in Shannon yet we have almost completed building another runway in Dublin. I do not know how that makes sense from an environmental perspective. The Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, might explain that. There is all this concrete, tarmacadam and so forth going into creating a runway when we already have two runways. We are going to have them competing with each other further. We are bussing people from the mid-west to Dublin to fly out of Ireland and everybody is flying into Dublin to be bussed down to the Cliffs of Moher. How does that make any environmental sense?

I return to my question: What is this about? If it is about answering questions, I would welcome answers to those particular questions. If it is just about the Government filling time because it has nothing else to do, I suggest it concentrate on the legislation that it is going to ram through at the end of this Dáil term.

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