Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and I will support the Bill, but reluctantly. It is a measure that should never have been required. I do not know what has happened since this Government was formed but for some peculiar reason it appears to be losing more and more of the public support that the last Government had. The last Government was hanging on by its fingernails after the general election while we awaited the formation of a Government, yet it had the confidence of all the people all of the time. In recent weeks the mixed messages that have been emerging have left everybody confused. The number of people who say to me, "The Government has no bloody clue what it is doing, so I am going to do my own thing anyway", has led to a need to start considering statutory instruments and emergency legislation, and we are tucking things into emergency legislation that should never have been introduced under the cover of Covid-19.

I listened to Antoinette Cunningham, the general secretary of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, AGSI, and her concerns about the way in which legislation is being drafted. Could the Minister reassure me that in drafting this legislation she sat down with the AGSI, the Garda Representative Association, GRA, and the superintendents and asked them how the powers they already have are meeting their needs with respect to dealing with Covid-19 and what they need in legislation? We need legislation that has teeth and is capable of doing the job we want it to do. We do not want to publish legislation for the hell of it. We also want Ministers to liaise with each other before they go on national media so they have the same story all the time. It makes it difficult for this Minister if another Minister is saying something different from what she says. Even if the difference is only a slight nuance, it causes concern in the public domain. We must take that on board.

I have always believed that the rural pubs got a raw deal. If one went to some of the rural pubs in my home town of Galway and out into Connemara and in my wife's home place in Kilkenny, one would be lucky to find four or five people in them on any day. Social distancing was never a problem because people all sat in their respective corners. The problem is the urban pubs that have no interest in their colleague publicans or in the Government's efforts in public health. They are grabbing what they can. I was on holidays in a certain part of the country and my five year old granddaughter said to me: "Grandad, we cannot go in there because there is no social distance". A five year old could tell me that people were inside abusing the public health. The people who were in there were happy in themselves. They did not give a continental damn - they were having a night out and to hell with everybody else.

I was delighted to hear the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, say that we are now talking about living with this condition rather than fighting it. We cannot beat Covid-19. The best brains in the world cannot do it, so we are learning to live with it. That is the important thing into the future. We need to close down the greedy publicans who want to pack their pubs. They are not doing anybody a service. However, there is another thing we must do. I have watched Members of the Dáil and of this House stand up and demand that we allow more people to attend this, that or the other. The last Government was led by the science. It listened to the scientists and it implemented what the scientists were saying. For God's sake, let us get back to that stage.Let us start listening to the scientists and obeying or agreeing with what they are trying to do. It is in all of our interests to so do. I fully support what the Minister is trying to do but I ask her, when she goes go back to the Cabinet, to advocate for having one voice telling one story. There should be clear and simple rules for everybody.