Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. As someone involved in the industry, it is hard to take what I have heard today. It is even harder to take what was said in the Dáil Chamber on Wednesday night. As the Minister and other speakers have said, Covid is not fair. Nobody disputes that Covid discriminates and has a greater impact on certain sectors of society than on others. We have all seen discrepancies throughout this process.

At the start of the pandemic, we asked the elderly to stay at home and not to go out which was frightening for them at the time. Young people have been affected most. All I can say to them is that they will probably have a bit longer to recover from it then the rest of us. That may be a positive. They have certainly taken the brunt of this. Even with the reopening of indoor hospitality, they are at the forefront of this because they are not vaccinated. We have asked leaving cert students to go back before other students. University students have not been able to attend college. Throughout this, there have been discrepancies and inconsistencies but that is what we had to do to deal with the crisis.

Regarding the reopening of my industry, accusations were made in the Dáil Chamber. I was disappointed that one Senator claimed there was widespread and wholesale non-compliance with the regulation, which is hurtful and disappointing. The industry is trying to reopen more than 13,000 premises with probably 150,000 employees who have not had the opportunity to work properly in more than 18 months. There are complications in it and we will have to deal with certain issues. However, when we opened indoor dining last year, we had our paper and pen. We took the names and the numbers for everybody who came in, which shows that we can deal with this. All I can ask is for the people themselves to make their own decision. If they are not happy with the premises, nobody is forcing them to go in. They can turn around and walk out the door.

Before making my last point, I thank the Minister and everybody else who got us to where we are today. I offer a special thanks to all the front-line workers and emergency workers who went out and served the country in the middle of the pandemic. I thank them because we were also discriminating against them. While we sat at home in safety, we put them at risk. There is risk throughout all of this.

I want to focus on what was said in the Dáil on Wednesday night.I am not too sure of the process that must be followed but I will ask the Cathaoirleach later what I can do about the misleading and false information that was given on the floor of the lower House on Wednesday night by Deputy Paul Murphy. He stated: "In November, the middle road was bowing to the pressure of the lobbyists to open hospitality in December and cause the deaths of more than 1,000 people in January and more than 1,000 people in February." I have had a problem with this since last December. Our hospitality sector was blamed for the outbreak in January but there is no evidence of that. Where is Deputy Murphy's evidence the hospitality sector caused 1,000 deaths in January and 1,000 more in February? We must call it out. I am disappointed with our national radio stations. Our own Taoiseach went on and tried to say it was not just hospitality but wider society which led to the death. Everyone in here knows about the house parties that were going on at Christmastime and on New Year's Eve. Hospitality only opened up for ten days leading into that period. I, therefore, for ask the record of the House be corrected in that regard. The Opposition is playing every side. Opposition Members are playing every angle they can but they our playing with our industry and people's jobs and livelihoods. I ask them to reflect on that when they make those outlandish statements about the hospitality sector. We will do our best. We have a safety charter in place. The hotel industry has been open since 2 June and young people are working in that sector. Dr. Tony Holohan has said the young people are a low risk in this sector. Opposition Members should not be selective when they pick on Dr. Holohan and his remarks. I thank the Acting Chairperson.