Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is great to be back in the Chamber and to have our home reinstated. I have raised this first issue on many occasions with the Leader and with colleagues in this House, which is the maternity restrictions that still exist in our 19 maternity hospitals and units throughout the country. I thank the Leader for taking the initiative in bringing together an all-party Oireachtas group of female Members to try to bring this matter to a resolution and to advocate on behalf of women and their partners throughout the country, who have been subjected to very cruel restrictions that are still in place while other restrictions are being lifted across the board. We have been talking to, and liaising with, the campaign group Better Maternity Care, which is doing fantastic work in providing a voice for women and their partners throughout the country.

All Members will agree that when we saw the story that came to the fore about an RTÉ camera crew and staff being allowed into the Rotunda Hospital to record a television programme, while partners and fathers waited in the car park outside as their babies were being born inside, was less than satisfactory. I would still love to find out the clinical reason why that was permitted and considered safe, yet it was not considered safe or appropriate for partners and fathers to be inside.

I would welcome the Leader again using her office and the collective strength of this House to try to get a resolution to this matter. I pose the question - who is making the decisions? We have clear, national guidelines from the director of the HSE, Paul Reid, the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach, yet hospitals continue to exercise a considerable degree of discretion locally that, in my view, is way beyond their remit. If additional capacity or new measures need to be put in place, then let us hear the plan because simply saying restrictions will stay in place until it suits hospitals for them not to be, is not a plan at all.

The second issue I will raise is the return of workers to the office yesterday. I wish all of them, and their employers, well, but issues are already starting to emerge around the return to the workplace. One of these is the difficult position employers find themselves in in that they cannot ask a worker if he or she has been vaccinated because it is seen as infringing on that person's civil liberties. That is fine, but there is a different approach to somebody who has been a close contact of someone who has Covid-19. If you are vaccinated, you do not need to self-isolate; if you are not vaccinated, you do. In the workplace, we do not know who should be adhering to what regulation because nobody knows the person's history, nor should they.

There is a considerable grey area around how workplaces will now function with the regulations that are still in place. Employers are finding themselves in a very difficult position, as are employees. We promised employees we would take to a new way of working, that there would be a facility to work from home where possible and that we would put legislation in place to facilitate workers' requests for a work-from-home situation to their employers. That is not in place yet but people are back in the workplace so there is a gap that needs to be filled by Government. Clearer rules and regulations around how the new workplace will now work are needed to give employers and employees the certainty they very much need.