Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

An tAire Sláinte is asking this House for the power to make up restrictions and regulations, as he sees fit, for another three months. This is the tenth time since the emergency powers were first agreed to deal with the immediate challenges posed by the onset of the pandemic that we are being expected to renew the blank cheque and to suspend normal parliamentary oversight. That is as the public sees it.

It is borne out by the chaotic scenes in respect of live events only last week and again the week before that. We are being asked to sign off on regulations that we have not seen. Last week, businesses and workers in the live events and nightlife industry were expected to comply with regulations that they had not seen or had any advance notice of. That is a joke. It makes a mockery of the whole notion of the rule of law. Ministers are placing themselves above democratic oversight. People are expected to abide by laws before they even have a chance to read them. The arrogance of Ministers demanding a blank cheque from the Dáil is matched by the sheer contempt with which they have treated the arts and culture sectors since the start of the pandemic.

For months, live events and nightlife were literally the only aspect of reopening for which Government had still to prepare a plan. The Departments of Health; Enterprise, Trade and Employment; the Environment, Climate and Communications; and Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media all knew this. We kept hearing about pilot test events and oversight groups which were supposedly planning for a planned reopening. How did we then find ourselves on the morning of 22 October, the long-announced date for the reopening, with no plan having been released for live events? Guidelines were issued only late in the afternoon of the reopening date and none of them were backed up by legally binding regulations. We know that the Attorney General has helpfully explained the distinction between advisory guidelines which do not carry any weight and legally binding regulations.

That was explained when the Tánaiste needed to be rescued from the fallout of the cronies' dinner he attended with others in the Merrion Hotel. Yet again, the Government was trying to blur the line between what is law and what is advisory, to cover its own failure to plan. Many club owners were unable to open on 22 October because the Government had left them completely in the dark as to what was required on that date. If that was not bad enough, the same happened last week, when regulations that were meant to come into effect on 29 October were published only that day. Again, many businesses simply could not reopen, which meant people were laid off and workers went without a night's pay almost two years after their dreams of reopening were crushed.

I sit on a cross-party committee on which colleagues from all parties focus on the music and entertainment sector. We have written today to the Ministers, Deputies Catherine Martin and Humphreys, and the Tánaiste, to demand action to help to mitigate the damage the Government has done. We state in that letter:

Events and gigs have been cancelled, numbers attending events have reduced dramatically and this is leading to great uncertainty about the viability of future work. The impracticality of new restrictions along with the mass confusion over to whom and to where restrictions apply is reducing employment opportunities and, in some cases, leading to zero opportunity.

The Government is not just limiting opportunities with confused guidelines; it is imposing cuts. Last week saw many musicians, artists and arts workers forced off the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and moved on to the jobseeker's allowance or, in some cases, given nothing. Why was no alternative support plan put in place to replace the PUP at least until the music and events sector can fully recover next spring or summer? We know the Departments of Social Protection and Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media were given a detailed proposal on Covid support for arts workers that would have seen those workers moved from PUP to a part-time job incentive scheme for the self-employed. Why was no action taken to deliver that proposal? Why has the Minister ignored repeated requests to provide a hardship fund to help artists who are struggling as a result of the public health emergency and the restrictions and regulations which the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, is seeking to extend today?

See this speech in context