Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like my colleague, Senator Currie, I want to raise my worries and fears over the Covid numbers. Senator Currie articulated very well the problems in the North. We need to hold tight and strong on Covid. We had 41 new cases in Louth last night. We can think of all those people's close contacts who are now in quarantine for Christmas. I beg people to mind themselves, watch what they do and listen to the Chief Medical Officer's advice for people to reduce their contacts because none of us wants to give Covid to a loved one. We want to make sure our grannies, grandads and vulnerable members of our families are with us next Christmas. We should think of next summer. We can have a Christmas party in July. We are on the verge possibly of a having a serious lockdown come January. As Senator Currie said, the North is in now in crisis. We heard a radio interview on "Morning Ireland" this morning about the numbers and the backlog going into emergency services. Definitely we need to help out the North, if it is at all possible. We need to relieve some of the pressures for those patients and the front-line workers up there but we need to make sure that, come January, we are not in a similar situation down here.