Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Someone said to me earlier that Leaders' Questions should be renamed Leaders' obfuscations. I asked three simple questions. I did not get an answer to a single one of them. Instead, I got a repetition of what is just a line that schools are safe places. Is the Taoiseach seriously saying that no transmission of Covid-19 takes place in schools? Is that why he is saying that schools are safe places? That is not what the international evidence suggests. There are children in our hospitals now with Covid-19. That is what the figures demonstrate.

The Taoiseach suggested that it is some kind of revelation that when we reopen that there will be increased socialisation and that then, of course, we will have an increased spread of the virus. Absolutely, but why did the Government then not do what was necessary to make schools, workplaces and public transport safe? That is what my questions relate to. Will the Government introduce free antigen testing? Will the Government introduce high efficiency particulate air, HEPA, filters into our schools? Will the Government also finally recognise the role that the airborne transmission of Covid-19 plays and introduce legislation to require clean air for everybody?

It is not even necessary for the Government to write new legislation. We did that in the summertime in the form of the Workplace Ventilation (Covid-19) Bill 2021. The Government will not even have to use its time to do that, because we are going to use our time next week to bring this Bill forward to ensure that everybody in a school or a workplace has a right to clean air and that-----

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