Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will be supporting this legislation, although we will be tabling a number of amendments. There has already been much discussion this morning on the need for a greater level of interaction between the Government and the Opposition, whether in dealing with legislation and proposals or the conditions prevailing at the time. It is about all the information being known. In fairness, there has been serious constructive engagement across this floor and in other forums on the operation of Leinster House. We need to see a greater element of that, accepting that there is a need to move quickly.

We need to look in the whole at how we deal with the pandemic. We had all hoped to be beyond this period but we are not. It is unfortunately part of the lexicon at this stage. We are where we are. There has been a failure to deal with certain sets of circumstances and there has been a failure to move quickly enough on antigen testing. There may have been particular reasons people did not want to engage in the conversation at an earlier stage but there had been huge acceptance of it across Europe and wherever else. I am glad we are making moves on that. Some of the chaos around schools was due to the proclamations, guidelines, declarations or whatever you want to call them from NPHET and then there was an absence of a narrative directly from the Government. We cannot have that sort of problem. People want to do the best they can but they need clear instructions. They do not want that element of confusion. I say that while accepting that this is an incredibly difficult situation to deal with.

We hope mandatory hotel quarantine will not need to be engaged. We are in the mouth of Omicron and there is the possibility of future variants. The fact is, as Mike Ryan has said, that travel bans will not deal with this. This is about our failure to vaccinate people across the world. This Government has to play its part with the TRIPS waiver. We have to push, particularly at European Council and Commission level but also at every other forum, to have a real conversation about this. A huge amount of public money has gone into the pharmaceutical industry. It is about delivering for people and none of us are safe until all of us are safe. That is the biggest thing that we need to get ahead of.

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