Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What about staff? People are saying, as an act of solidarity, to let everyone into the pubs. Think about that for a second. They are saying to put people's lives at risk as an act of solidarity. We have to be careful when we talk about solidarity. Outside of this place, people get what this means.

Some contributors stated that this is not enforceable. At the same time, however, they tabled amendments to bring in things like antigen testing, which would make it much harder to enforce. Pubs and restaurants are capable of asking people their age before they serve them a drink. They are capable of engaging with people and asking to see their proof of vaccination. Here is mine. At the top of the Covid tracker application is my QR code. It is no more complicated than that. Senator Casey asked if pubs and restaurants are capable of keeping their staff and patrons safe. Of course they are. In the not too distant past, pubs would not let you in if they did not like your shoes. They could refuse admission based on nothing more than saying "Look at the head on you". They are capable of asking to look at a person's QR code. Workers and their safety are absolutely being considered. I will be clear that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and representative groups for the sector were in the room. They do not like all of it. None of us, including me, like all of it. The representative groups and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said that we have serious priorities on this. We have to ensure that the protocols are fully enforced but they are willing to go along with it because it gets tens of thousands of men and women back to work, which we are trying to do.

We are not discriminating against people. We are differentiating. Differentiation is already in place in the context of international travel. Whether a person is fully vaccinated matters. When we brought that in, nobody suggested that it was discriminatory. People said that was based on what is safe or not. Under-18s are not allowed to be served alcohol in our pubs and restaurants. I do not think anybody here would argue that that is discriminatory. We say that is the case because it is safe. You are not allowed to smoke inside but that is not discriminatory. It is a public health measure to keep people safe. This is a public health measure to keep people safe. Unvaccinated people who I have spoken to get that. The only place that this does not seem to resonate is in the Oireachtas.

I hate the phrase, but when people who are 70 or older were asked to cocoon on public health grounds to keep them safe, I never heard one voice individual say that was discriminatory and that, as a result, the entire country would have to cocoon because we had to implement all the measures together. We do not and we never have. People aged 70 and over had to isolate in order to keep themselves safe. Unvaccinated people need to keep out of the restaurants for a short period to keep themselves safe. No one suggested that younger people should cocoon as an act of solidarity with those in their 70s. People have had to do different things right from the start of this pandemic based on safety and none of it is fair. There is nothing fair about this virus or the fact that it kills more older people than younger people. There is nothing fair for countries all over the world which cannot get their hands on vaccines while we are using 300,000 a week. There is nothing fair about this pandemic. It is brutal and ugly but we are all trying to do our best.

Several Senators have reasonably asked how bad it could get. We do not know how bad it could get.