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

I am sorry, as I am slightly late to the debate. I support Deputy Cullinane's amendment. We are not, as Deputy Bríd Smith indicated in the Second Stage debate, supportive of this legislation. That is not in any because we are reluctant or reticent about protecting public health. We think it is critical to protect public health. From the beginning, we have been 150% in favour of promoting vaccination and it is clear that vaccination has reduced the likelihood of illness, hospitalisation and death. At this stage, we would strongly encourage people to take up the vaccine. What is frustrating is the incoherence and often arbitrary and sometimes directionless approach of the Government when it comes to dealing with the pandemic at the stage we are at now.

At this point, I seriously ask the question of where the strategy is heading. Where exactly are we going with this? What is the objective of what we are doing at the moment? I seriously wonder about it and I do not think it has been properly explained. People are right to call out the fact that at the outset of the pandemic we used to have reasonably regular briefings, which we had to ask for, with the key Ministers and the public health experts to thrash out what was being proposed and the basis on which decisions were being made and we had opportunities to question those measures. That is all gone now, and we just have the Government seeking to have quite draconian powers without much accountability in terms of the decisions that are being made. I have a significant problem with that, in particular because I do not know quite where it is going.

Today, the Taoiseach was quick to have little gibes at some of us about the fact that we were for zero Covid but now we are not for this. If for no other reason, I want to explain our rationale on that. Our rationale is very simple. At that stage we did not have more than 90% of the population vaccinated. We were very keenly aware-----

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