Ivana Bacik (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and welcome this urgent and practical Bill. Clearly, it is important that we have certainty and clarity in the law around outdoor hospitality for licensed premises. It simply was not good enough, either for the Garda or for those running such premises, to be told that it would be left to the discretion of gardaí. Nor, indeed, was it good for those seeking to partake of outdoor hospitality.

My party welcomes the Bill. We would like to facilitate its passage. It is urgent, as the Minister of State said. It is particularly urgent now that we are seeing the very worrying developments with the Delta variant and increased transmissibility because the need to maintain socialising out of doors rather than indoors will be with us for some time. That is a particularly pressing matter now.

I want to make a few points. First, we need to facilitate safe outdoor socialising, not only in licensed premises but also in other ways. I have been contacted by cafés, in Ranelagh and in other areas across Dublin Bay South, which do not have licences and which are concerned about being facilitated to provide outdoor seating.

The Government has made available significant funding and I commend Dublin City Council on some creative uses of outdoor space and of pavements for the pedestrianisation of parts of the city. It has done a great job on Merrion Row, albeit that there is no space for bicycles cycling through that area now. It means, however, there are increased seating areas. We have seen innovative approaches being taken in, for example, Rathgar village with the collaboration between the local authority and the Presbyterian Church where we see outdoor seating provided. I understand a similar arrangement is to be made in Terenure and in other areas. Unfortunately, we have seen in my local community in Portobello some difficulties with facilitating those who want to socialise safely out of doors and also huge difficulties for local residents who have been faced with in some cases very distressing incidences of anti-social behaviour and late-night drinking, etc. More needs to be done to create safe spaces that will not interfere with quality of life for local residents in residential areas but which will enable the facilitation of outdoor dining. Provision of additional public toilets in areas away from residential communities, provision of additional bins and waste facilities as well as outdoor seating are all essential. I would put that to the Minister of State as well.

In terms of the broader picture of how we proceed with the outdoor summer in a way that is mindful of the increased risk of transmissibility with the Delta variant, we need to look at how we will manage this. This week, we saw real heartbreak and distress for many of those in the hospitality business who are running restaurants, pubs and cafés, where they do not have significant outdoor space and who had been gearing up to open indoor spaces. We all know people who have been utterly devastated. We have listened to interviews with restaurateurs. Mr. J. P. McMahon, for example, spoke about the devastation of having to cancel all the bookings he had made and facing into the huge financial and human cost of that. All of us are thinking of those people and those businesses. There are very serious concerns about how we can proceed to ensure supports for those businesses and how they can reopen, at least partially, safely.

Concerns have been expressed to me about the idea of the vaccination certificate, of the separate categorisations, the difficulty for businesses of trying to police it, the difficulty for family groups with different age cohorts, and for me, as a lawyer, the difficulty with seeing potential for indirect discrimination on the basis of age when different age cohorts do not have access to vaccine. These are all very serious problems with the concept of a vaccination certificate, albeit that all of us understand why the Government is putting this forward. What we really need is clarity on how this will proceed.

I very much welcome today's announcement that 18 to 35 year olds will now be able to access Janssen vaccine from pharmacies from Monday next. As that significant acceleration of vaccination rolls out, it may address some of the issues and concerns about this concept of a vaccination certificate but it still leaves huge uncertainty about this for businesses. I would ask that the Government would take on board the new modelling that will arise from the accelerated vaccination and that the Minister will come forward with greater clarity for businesses on reopening and for all of us on what can be done this summer.

Finally, an issue that has been raised with me extensively is the huge concern among the 60 to 69 year old cohort who feel they have been left behind and that there was an inequity with their vaccine because they received AstraZeneca. I welcome the news that they will be seeing an acceleration of the second vaccine dose but wish to acknowledge that the huge success of the vaccine programme has been reliant on public goodwill and buy-in. Where there is a perception of inequity, unfairness or lack of clarity, we see the programme being undermined. That is not in any of our interests. I put those concerns on the table and thank the Minister of State again for bringing this Bill to us this morning.