Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It really directly follows on from that and goes back to the point I made earlier in asking what the point is here. My understanding is that the Minister does not envisage introducing mandatory hotel quarantine for UK arrivals, or at least, that is the signal we got. What we were talking about is states like South Africa, where there have been restrictions placed on travel. I think they are pointless, as does the WHO. The restrictions are punishing the people who helped us to identify Omicron, which may not even have originated in South Africa. It quite possibly did not originate there. In any event, it is in the UK. Every single day, people are travelling north, south, east, west, and so on. It all seems rather pointless. I am beginning to wonder whether we are debating a piece of legislation, which I know everybody is saying we do not want to have to put into place, when the Government does not even envisage any remote possibility that it is going to be deployed.

I support Deputy Duncan Smith's amendment, because the thought that somebody coming back from having a termination would be put in mandatory hotel quarantine against the background of something that seems rather pointless, in any event, seems absolutely unbearable. It begs the question of what the whole point of this is and what the Government sees happening. The Minister was scoring a few political points - and fair enough - about our position before, but our position was linked to a strategy. There was a purpose. The purpose was to keep the virus out until we got vaccinated, because we were close enough to elimination. If we eliminated it pending a vaccine, we could open up. The Minister disagreed with that strategy, but it was a legitimate strategy. It was a strategy that was followed by New Zealand.

I am trying to find out what the strategy is here. If the strategy was to keep out Omicron or even slow it down, then the restrictions would be applied now. They would apply, for example, to England and the Netherlands - not just to South Africa and the rest of them. If the Government wanted to slow down the virus, they would apply the restrictions now. If we do it in two or three weeks, when Professor Tony Holohan or somebody decides that Omicron is actually a real problem, it will be absolutely too late. I do not see the logic of what the Government is doing. I am not out to score political points; I am just trying to understand the point. I do not really see the point, unless the Minister is actually telling us that he is thinking, in the relatively short term, that it is a serious possibility that mandatory hotel quarantine could be required for people coming from the UK, the Netherlands or wherever. In the case of abortion services, obviously, we are primarily talking about the UK.

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