Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am very grateful to Senator Daly for sharing time with me. I will echo some of my colleagues' comments. I question the reason this is a health measure as opposed to a justice measure and I also have concerns around civil liberties. I particularly agree with the remarks made by Senator Ward on the need for oversight because while people are in quarantine they do have rights and it is important that those are protected.

In the operation of this measure, and I raised this point with the Minister for Transport also, has consideration been given to the possibility of engaging with some of the tour companies and those who have experience of taking large groups of people from airports to hotels? They are underutilised at the moment and consideration should be given to engaging with a number of them.

I agree with Senator Daly on the question of when we will have freedom to travel because that is a question that will start to arise soon. Once we start to see large numbers of people being vaccinated, particularly the elderly and the vulnerable, the question of who is allowed to travel will arise. The Government needs to give us certainty on the question of vaccine certification, which will be the next step. Some response on that will be helpful.

I raise again the classification of family carers as key workers.We need clarification from the national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, on that as a matter of urgency.

Senator Keogan said, “Better late than never”, on Government policy. I welcome her conversion because she now talks about a rapid roll-out of the vaccine programme, yet in this very House, on 10 November, she asked questions about the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine. I think it is very rich to go from vaccine sceptic to now be criticising the Government about the speed of the programme.

One of the other issues that has to be addressed is around some of the conspiracy theorists, who are the real ones undermining a lot of the effort and who are responsible, ultimately, for what happened on Grafton Street this week, including conspiracy theorists in these Houses. There are people in these Houses who have been driving the conspiracies around Covid and other matters, and they need to be called out. Those political parties which have those people as members, as Deputies, need to call them out and get them to apologise for their actions.