Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is regrettable, in the first instance, that we in the House have to bring forward legislation such as this. It is symptomatic of a desire on the part of certain people to ignore the basic guidelines. Looking through the window of where society currently is, there is the zero-Covid side on one extreme and, on the other, the herd immunity analysis. The reality is that most people are somewhere in the middle. They want to do what is right but they want to live with Covid. The Government will have to move more quickly to set out a strategy for how we will live with Covid over the coming months.

I listened to some of the debate in the other House. Sadly, a couple of Deputies, probably for political gain, took an extreme stance on the issue, rejecting the notion of working with the authorities on it. That kind of dog whistle from the Parliament gives rise to what we saw in Grafton Street on Wednesday night last, which is regrettable. I would very much prefer if we were not moving to level 5 and I have publicly stated we should not have done so. I think we should have given level 3 more time, but I will not harp on about it in the Chamber because the decision has been taken by the Government and it is now up to all of us who believe in democracy. There have been some fiery contributions, with people raising questions about this democratic institution, but this House and the other were democratically elected and decisions have been taken.

Turning to the legislation, I will defer to the former Attorney General when he raises the serious points he did. He did not do that for political gain or to grandstand, but as a practitioner of the law who fully understands the problem. It speaks to the issue of rushing through legislation. This is an emergency; why could we not have sat over the next couple of days? There are rare occasions where the House has to sit on a Saturday and a Sunday, and I do not think any of us would object to that. There were debates on other, previous items of legislation where I worried we were rushing through matters, including earlier today. We need to get serious about thrashing out legislation. There are people in the House with experience, such as Senator McDowell as a former Attorney General and a senior counsel, who can pick up legislation and immediately see holes in it. We will have to do our work a little better over the coming months.