Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was curious to see what reason he would give for not supporting the Bill this time, given that it seems to be very much in line with what he advocated for in the past, albeit a much more modest version.

However, the Deputy is opposing it. Members should remember that we are not here to introduce mandatory hotel quarantine. We are here because we have very serious public health advice in the context of the new variant, which I hope will prove not to be as deadly serious but, as yet, we do not know. The advice we got was that it may be necessary, if this variant turns out to have some really sinister characteristics in terms of severity, vaccine escape, transmissibility and so forth, to bring in this most serious but targeted measure. That is the public health advice. We are not here to introduce it; we are here to bring in a legislative basis, such that if it is required very quickly, it can be brought in. That is what this debate is about.

Deputy Boyd Barrett has said in good faith that he is all ears and he asked about the rationale. Deputy McNamara may have left the Chamber but he fairly asked, as did I, what is the rationale. In response to Deputy Connolly's point, this is not a light-touch piece of regulation. We all obviously treat this deadly seriously. This is about depriving people of their civil liberties – people who have done nothing wrong. We only do that in the most extreme circumstances, as we did earlier this year. The moment that it was no longer deemed necessary, we closed it down and the legislation lapsed, which is why we are here this evening. The legislative basis went away, as it should. There must be sunset clauses on these provisions.

One could ask why we need it now. What the Government has decided to do is to act on the public health advice, which is to be ready to put targeted, mandatory hotel quarantine in place if needed. Why? We all know why. It is the potential threat of the Omicron variant. We all hope that the characteristics that are found show this not to be such a big threat, but right now, we do not know. We are all reading opinion and hypotheses based on limited data, but we do not know. More time is required. That is the rationale. If the Omicron variant turns out to be a very sinister and serious threat relative to Delta, such that it would for example outperform or replace Delta and have significant ability to evade vaccines and cause severe illness, in that situation the Chief Medical Officer might say we do need to bring in this measure.

No one is suggesting that this will stop Omicron. We know it is here. More and more cases will be found and confirmed through genome sequencing in the coming days and weeks. What are we trying to do? What would be the point if the legislation is implemented? The point would be to slow it down. Similarly, I will be signing regulations this evening for preflight departure tests for people coming into the country, regardless of vaccine status. At the moment, as we all know, if one is unvaccinated or has not had Covid in the past six months, if one is coming into Ireland now one needs a preflight PCR test. That is the current situation. What we are saying is that for those who are vaccinated, for a short period they will also need either a PCR test or an antigen test. It is an extra layer of security. Will it stop the Omicron variant coming in? No, of course it will not. None of us suggests that it would.

It is all about layers of protection. The regulations I will be signing this evening in terms of international travel is one layer. It is imperfect. Hotel quarantine would be another layer. It is imperfect. We have home quarantine in place for the seven listed countries. Is it perfect? No, of course it is not, but it is another layer. It is about putting layers of protection in place to slow down the variant. Why does slowing it down matter rather than perhaps letting it spread here? It is because we are moving very quickly through a booster campaign which is hugely effective. There are very promising antivirals to which we will have access quite shortly as well. Things are changing in a very positive way in terms of the total arsenal of weapons we have available. Slowing this down may prove to be very important. Of course, we do not know yet because there is more we still need to find out.

I do not for a moment believe I will have changed Deputy Boyd Barrett's mind. I do not believe he is going to vote differently - I fully respect how he is going to vote - but I did want to address the question he and others raised in good faith and that I asked of the CMO, which is why we are here. As Deputy Connolly says, this is really serious legislation that we are proposing. That is the rationale. The Deputy can agree or disagree. We can debate it further, but that is the reason for the legislation.

In response to Deputy Tóibín's point, I agree with an awful lot of what he says. We do need more healthcare capacity. We are putting it in as quickly as the system is able to manage, in terms of hospital beds, ICU beds, home care, diagnostics and operating theatres. We do need more and more. We will continue to do that. Do we need very strong measures in nursing homes, hospitals and other healthcare settings? Absolutely, we do. There are layers of protection in place, none of which is perfect, but it seems to have worked quite well in the more recent waves.

Deputy Tóibín states hotel quarantine is imperfect. Absolutely, it is imperfect. Hopefully, it will not be needed. Hopefully, the information we get on this new variant is such that we do not need to bring it in. I do not want to bring it in. None of us want to bring it in. Hopefully, the CMO does not believe there is a point where it might be warranted, but critically, we want to be able to do it quickly if it is required. That is the answer to the Deputy's question in that regard.

There were various questions about whether it works. I think it is fair to say it does work. If we go back to the operation of the previous quarantine regime we had, the total number of cases was not insignificant, but as a percentage of all cases it was very low. The real benefit of it was reducing the volumes of people coming in from the higher risk countries. If we look at those volumes, the arrivals dropped off a cliff. The biggest public health benefit we get is that we reduce incoming travel from the highest risk places for a period. It most definitely worked from that perspective. Deputy McNamara asked about the cost. It was €24.7 million. I can provide any Deputy who would like it with a breakdown of the cost.

Deputy Connolly raised many issues. I fully respect her position in terms of voting against this Bill. I also agree with an awful lot of what she said in terms of how serious this is. Where I differ, and why I am proposing it and she is opposing it, is because I believe that in terms of balancing a very significant public health threat, taking such extraordinary measures is warranted in a targeted and time-limited way. I fully hear her in terms of how serious what we are proposing is and how serious what we did previously was. The Deputy raised one issue in terms of consultation. I want to clarify that for all of the regulations, there is a legal requirement as part of the process for me to consult with all relevant line Ministers.

I will now speak to the amendments. First, I fully appreciate the spirit of the amendments. More can be done, and I would like to work with colleagues to improve the process in terms of engagement on the regulations, legislation and the pandemic generally. I would very much like to meet with colleagues and work through what would make that easier.

It may not always feel like it, but genuine efforts are made on an ongoing basis. For example, in one of the pieces of legislation we had not that long ago, an amendment was tabled from the Opposition on sunset clauses, which we accepted. There is a lot of information online. Members of the House last year and earlier this year were rightly looking for very comprehensive daily, weekly and monthly information and geographic information. They sought very granular breakdowns. I hope Deputies will appreciate that we have gone to great lengths to try to provide that in great detail online in terms of vaccinations, hospitalisations, ICU, geographies and in many other areas. I hope that is valuable.

I also gave a commitment at the health committee recently to make sure that its members are aware of these amendments specifically. I immediately sent it copies of the regulations.

I am very happy to give an undertaking this evening that that would be for health spokespersons, all Oireachtas Members or anybody wanted that. There will be no problem in doing that.

Specifically with reference to what these amendments would do, while I fully accept their spirit, I cannot accept them. We can and should do more by way of engagement. If these amendments were passed, the Government would agree certain actions. Those would be written up into regulations. Line Ministers would be consulted on those regulations and after a consultation period, I would then sign the regulations but they could not be activated straightaway because once I signed them, they would have to be laid before the Houses for a minimum of 48 hours before they could come into effect. That is, first of all, creating a two-day delay. Once they had been laid before both Houses, if both Houses did not vote to accept the regulations, the regulations would fall. That really would not work.

It would not work for the Oireachtas, by the way, either. Not including the hotel quarantine regulations, I signed in excess of 130 Covid-19 regulations. Presumably, the purpose of them being laid before the Houses and voted on is that there would have to be debate, which we would all quite rightly want to have. With some 130 such debates in the last 18 months in the Dáil and the Seanad as well as with votes, one can imagine the time that would have taken up. It would most definitely have meant that very important legislation that the Oireachtas needed to deal with would simply never get seen to. A vast amount of time would be required by the Oireachtas to scrutinise, debate and then vote on 130 plus regulations, which does not include the mandatory hotel quarantine ones.

Essentially that would take up a great amount of time here which would mean very important priority legislation would not happen. It would slow down our ability to respond and would also create great uncertainty. The Minister for Health would sign these into law, they would become law but they could not be activated under law for 48 hours. It is possible that they could then fall as law within 14 days if both Houses did not vote on them. One can imagine that this would create significant uncertainty for patients, for people travelling, for enforcement, for operators and so forth. For all of those reasons, I cannot accept the amendments but, as I said, we can and I would like to do more.

In the spirit of the Second Stage debate, and since we had the Second Stage debate, I met the Department to discuss the regulations on travel this evening and have asked it to create comprehensive briefing notes for all Members of the Oireachtas in an effort to try to start putting this into action. All Members will, therefore, be receiving a briefing note on that and I would like to continue doing that.

Some of the regulations are very minor things but some are obviously very serious and of great import and, of course, all of the Members should be able to see them, have them sent directly to them and receive briefing notes on them when they are material. Some of them are not really material. I appreciate the amendments and I understand why they have been tabled which is why I cannot accept them but there is more that we can do.

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