Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all Senators for their contributions. I am delighted to be back. The debate in this House is excellent. I thank Senators for their kind words and for the debate.

This legislation is no joke. I agree with various Senators who said they would never normally support legislation like this. I would never normally support legislation like this. This is emergency legislation and one of the safeguards we have in it is a sunset clause. Every three months, which is a very short period of time, it has to be passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas. That is an important safeguard.

Various Senators raised the amount of time provided for this debate. I was simply told to be here. I had no input into that. Just so we can all remain friends, I am more than happy to debate the Bill for as long as possible because this is serious. It provides for depriving people of their liberty for a two-week period in a designated facility, which they are not allowed to leave, when they have committed no crime. Let us take it as such, and I know we do.

A common issue raised is in regard to the number of countries covered. Various other questions were asked but at the core of this debate has been the suggestion by some that more countries need to be added. Some of the amendments we will discuss would require that all countries be covered. I will address that. When I brought this legislation through the Dáil on Thursday, there were 20 countries on the list. As I stand here, there are 33 countries on the list and, as advised by the Chief Medical Officer, that number can be raised.Some Senators are saying it needs to be the entire world but we are being led by public health advice on this and we have added the 33 countries that public health officials have advised. It would be incorrect to suggest this legislation is limited to 32 countries; the Minister for Health can designate any number of additional countries. That is important. A wide variety of factors can be considered. Section 38E empowers Minister for Health to designate additional states "where there is known to be sustained human transmission of Covid-19 or any variant of concern or from which there is a high risk of importation of infection or contamination with Covid-19 or any variant of concern by travel from that state". Many factors can be considered in adding countries to the designation.

Critically, any measure that requires mandatory quarantine must be proportionate. It must be in line with EU law and the Constitution. Many statements were made in the Dáil last Thursday to the effect that everybody needed to be added. It was the view of the Labour Party, Sinn Féin and a few others. I made a point on this in the Dáil but it was ignored by the Labour Party and Sinn Féin. I would like to make it again in the hope that it is not ignored: we have included a test for proportionality in order that this legislation will be legally robust. The question before us is whether we want to pass legislation that is not legally robust or legislation that is legally robust and gives us a pathway to everything that is being asked for. That is the question for us as legislators. While we will debate this further when dealing with the first set of amendments on Committee Stage, the main consideration regarding how many countries we add is whether we want a legally robust, evidence-based, public health-led mechanism or one that is not legally robust. That is the question we have to answer.

Various comments have been made to the effect that there is nothing in place and that the country is wide open. It is not. Mandatory quarantine is in place in Ireland for all incoming travellers. Mandatory home quarantine is in place and it is legally enforceable. The preflight PCR test is in place. Fines for non-essential travel are in place. Genome sequencing has been very significantly ramped up. We are now at 15% of all positive tests. Travel visas from a wide variety of countries have been suspended. Domestic travel measures have been applied to people coming into the Republic from Northern Ireland. There are very significant measures already in place. This measure is simply the last of those. I thank Members again for their contributions and I look forward to Committee Stage.