Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In Ireland, in politics and in life, we should be careful what we wish for. I am looking at a picture sent to me of a recent tweet the Taoiseach posted with a picture of a Kamala Harris baseball cap. Was he supporting one side or the other?

How come it is only in Ireland that we are having an evaluation of what happened during Covid? In every other jurisdiction I am aware of, they are having a proper independent inquiry, including in Northern Ireland, across the water, and in many other countries around the world. I attended an event with party leaders in Government Buildings before Deputy Harris was Taoiseach, with the previous Taoiseach. The cry that day nine months ago was that Ireland was too small a place and we could not really inquire. Thousands of lives were lost. We did some good things. We made terrible mistakes. How are we going to learn from our mistakes if we do not have a proper, meaningful, independent inquiry with teeth and powers of compellability? This evaluation is only a charade, and people's lives mean nothing, with the suffering, the mental health issues, the damage to businesses and families and everything else. We need a proper inquiry, not an evaluation. It is just another cop-out and an Irish solution to an Irish problem - a cover-up again.

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