Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Joan Collins.

I asked for this debate and I welcome it. I do not have much time to contribute, so I must ask myself what points are important to make. I do not wish to waste that time commenting on a senior Minister's absence from the debate while he attends a well-being expo. I said earlier, and I reiterate it now for the record, that it is entirely unacceptable. The Ministers of State seem to be entirely overworked. I pay tribute to their work on the ground. The Minister for Health should be here because the announcement to lift the restrictions, while welcome, was made outside of the House, without any placing of it in the context of the draconian legislation still on the Statute Book and when that will be lifted, and without any reference to a human rights assessment of what we have been through. While I forgive everything that happened in the beginning because, clearly, the pandemic developed very suddenly, and while I participated in the debate on and gave my consent to the draconian legislation to which I refer, I never again did so on the basis that I never once accepted that the Government was being frank with me regarding either the facts and figures or a human rights assessment. In fact, when I raised this recently with the Taoiseach, I think his response, although I am subject to correction, was that he was too busy for a human rights assessment but that he would have no problem with one in the future.

This pandemic is now included in the national risk assessment register for the next time. When we look back on it, we will need to look at the preparedness and the planning, and we will need to learn from what has happened. A cross-party committee recommended an inquiry into what happened in nursing homes but no action has been taken on foot of any of its recommendations. There has been a press release about a look-back exercise but, again, no Minister has provided terms of reference or told us what we are setting out to learn. The main issue that has jumped out at me over the past two years related to the compliance of the public, which was noted repeatedly in the Policing Authority's very detailed reports. One of the very good mechanisms that was set up, I think by the then Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, ensured that the policing powers would be monitored. The Policing Authority was given that role and carried it out very effectively. It praised the Garda when praise was due and it also highlighted some of the problems, but the main issue that was highlighted concerned the compliance of the population.

When we clap hands and give awards, that is for the people who showed us the way. The Government moved from a position of solidarity, whereby we were all in it together, to one of division. We did that first with the over-70s and we then ended up using our children to protect adults. It had never happened, to my knowledge, in the history of the world that we would use children, who were not themselves in danger, to protect adults. We then brought in a mandate of mask-wearing at school for them. I happily wear my mask and comply with everything, but this has been done without any built-in review until the end of February, although I acknowledge that seems to have begun happening. We are doing this without any thought about the effects on children. One has only to read the special rapporteur's report on the effects of Covid on children and the disproportionate effects on different groups. We were never all in this together, although we were given the illusion at the beginning by the people who led us that we were.

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