Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am going to make the same points I made last January with regard to the mandatory hotel quarantine proposals that were introduced then. I questioned how on earth we were going to stop a variant coming in by limiting people coming into some frontiers of the State from some countries. At the time I asked the Minister if the purpose of mandatory hotel quarantining was to stop new variants coming in and he accepted that it was. If that was the purpose of it, and if that could be achieved, I would be prepared to look at what is proposed but it is simply impossible. Stopping people from some countries is not going to stop a variant coming in because we know that this new variant is widespread around the world. It is in the United Kingdom and we are not, as previous speakers have said, going to introduce any restrictions on travel to the United Kingdom. I am not suggesting that we should but I am pointing out the futility of what we are doing. It is utterly futile, but it is not free.

Some 10,294 people entered mandatory hotel quarantine. They were detained, realistically. There was a deprivation of liberty involved, although whether it was a classic detention or not is an ongoing debate. Of those 10,000 people, 593 tested positive. When the Government ended mandatory hotel quarantining I was surprised by the reaction, even by the standards of spin. Spin is not unique to this Government. Right across most western states governments now celebrate every measure as a great success that will keep us safe. I am not expecting the Government to keep me safe from Covid because I do not think it should be expected to keep people safe from Covid. Unfortunately, that is simply not possible. We are in the midst of a pandemic. People need to be cautious; I am not suggesting that they should not be, but I question this idea that we elect a government to keep us safe and that it can do so no matter what happens, whether it is a pandemic or an earthquake. The Government has to be seen to be doing something so it adopts often futile measures.

The success of mandatory hotel quarantining was celebrated and lauded. However, only 593 cases were detected there. During the time that mandatory hotel quarantining was in operation, 151,350 cases were detected in the State, so mandatory hotel quarantining detected 0.39% of cases. Sincerely, what was the point of that? What did it achieve other than maybe to act as a deterrent to people from certain countries coming to Ireland? If that is what it is about, let us be honest about it. Let us say we want to prevent immigration from certain states in southern Africa, because that is all it will potentially achieve. I do not think the idea of entering mandatory hotel quarantine is necessarily a huge deterrent to people who are desperate to come to Ireland, for whatever reason. We had a debate last night about people smuggling. I am not saying that everybody who comes from southern Africa is desperate to come to Ireland. Some are but many are not, and there are returning Irish citizens coming from those countries as well. What is the point of detecting 0.39% of cases? If we were going to prevent this and further variants coming into the country, and if I thought it was even possible to do that, then I would consider supporting this measure but we all know it is not possible because it is already here and in every country of the European Union. This will not be the last variant. I expect there will be further variants because that is what we have been told by many experts.

The director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory at UCD, Dr. Cillian De Gascun, said that it was blind luck that the case of Omicron that is in Ireland was detected. If we are going to rely on blind luck, then let us not pretend that this measure is going to do anything other than pretend to people that it will keep them safe when it is not going to have any impact whatsoever. If it detects 0.39% of a new variant coming into the country, what difference will that make? We in Ireland are probably no worse in this regard than most countries in the European Union but we are going to have to live with the fact that we are in the midst of a pandemic. We must accept the limitations that that will bring to our lives but we should not add to those limitations just for the sake of doing so, such as by putting masks on children, which Deputy Tóibín referred to.

I am willing to accept that masks in a supermarket or for a fleeting encounter on a bus might make a difference, but if someone is going to sit a couple of feet away from someone else for six hours per day and breathe the same poorly ventilated air, I cannot accept that a mask is going to stop the transmission of a respiratory virus where people are infectious. The reason for masks in this instance is because we followed the fiction for so long that schools were safe. Schools were not safe. They are absolutely necessary-----

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