Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know of any immunologist or serious academic on the issue of Covid-19 who says it will end. Safety is always relative and complete safety is impossible to attain. Increasingly, people have elected governments to keep them safe and governments have taken more and more powers to keep people safe. Yet, unfortunately, safety is unattainable. Again I ask when is the end. Are we talking about the end of Covid? If we are, I fear we are deluding ourselves. If we are talking about locking down and restricting essential freedoms until the end of Covid, we are talking about restricting them forever because nobody suggests Covid will come to an end. Will we impose these restrictions until we reach the end of liberal democracy as we know it?

I am not just talking about Ireland. The Minister has left for, I am sure, good reason but, in fact, some of our restrictions look mild compared with what we see on the television screens from Australia, in particular, and many other countries. We are, in my view, witnessing the end of liberal democracy or even democracy as we know it. Democracy is more than a tyranny of the majority. It is the ability to question regulations and laws, to ask the basis for them and to probe whether the underlying assumptions are correct. We have not had that because those who effectively determine what we should do are not amenable to this Dáil because they are not Members of it and do not have a duty to come before it. They advise the Minister. Rather, they advise the public and the media what they will advise the Minister and put it up to the Minister to do that. If he does, he has them to fall back on. If he does not do it and things go wrong, which they will because we will not be safe and Covid will not end, then he will be pilloried for not having followed the public health advice. However, the public health advice is focused on one thing only: the suppression of Covid-19. That is something I support and always have but I do not accept it is the only basis on which we should be running our society or economy. I am not saying economic rights or the economy are more important but our healthcare system is dependent upon an economy to function.

I will go a little bit into these powers. We had a Covid committee at one point. The Minister, who, unfortunately, is not here at the moment, was a member of that committee. We had a former Supreme Court judge from the United Kingdom address us. He said:

[I]f the Government is going to confer extremely drastic powers on the Executive or Ministers, it is extremely important to have a very high level of parliamentary scrutiny. These powers should only be available subject to parliamentary confirmation and regulation and they should have a very limited duration and be open to renewal. It seems to me that for democracy it is absolutely fundamental that the Legislature should not forfeit pretty well day-to-day control of what Ministers are doing with powers which in any normal circumstances would be regarded as inconsistent with basic democratic laws.

He concluded:

I have read the Health Act 1947 of Ireland ... [which is what we are essentially extending. He said:] it seems to me that the provisions for parliamentary scrutiny are virtually non-existent. That seems to me, as a democrat, to be questionable.

Deputies do not have to go to England to find this criticism. A group of academics in Trinity College Dublin examined the whole thing and reported in August. They came to the conclusion that, "The relationship between the government and NPHET—and the locus of power in that relationship—isn’t always clear." That is essentially the construct we are extending and rolling over in the legislation. That is why I opposed it as a democrat who was democratically elected. The people can get rid of me at the next election and possibly they will.

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