Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I ask colleagues to think about that. If zero Covid is not the answer, and I do not think it is, why are we doing what we are doing? The advice I have from the Attorney General is that this must have a proportionality test because it is about depriving people of their liberty for two weeks in a designated facility, which is a very serious thing to do. There needs to be a proportionality test. The second point is that it is public health-led.

The language used by Senator Higgins in putting forward this idea is that there must be consistency and that there is a question as to whether there has been favouritism. These are charges that are essentially being made against the public health officials providing this advice. I doubt if that is what the Senator means, and it may be that this is a charge that she is making against the Government, but this is a public health recommendation that we are getting.I point-blank refute the idea that our Chief Medical Officer is somehow playing favourites with one region of the world versus another. This is based on public health advice-----