Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will try not to use the full hour. I thank colleagues for their time and their contributions. These debates are genuinely invaluable, to listen to new ideas and be challenged on what may or may not be working. Of course we are not getting everything right; no government is. It is very important that we listen to the challenges and in this House most of the challenges are very reasonable. That is not always the case in the Lower House but it is here. Various issues have been raised such as the TRIPS waiver, safe access zones and many more. We have covered some of them previously and we may be covering some others next week. I will confine my response specifically to the legislation before us.

As legislators, the requirement for this Bill comes down to a small number of important questions as we try to deal with Covid-19. The first question we have to ask ourselves is whether we need public health measures to respond to Covid-19 and keep people safe from it. We only need this legislation if we believe public health measures are required. I certainly believe that and I think the vast majority of people in this House believe do as well. If we believe public health measures are required, the second important question is whether any of these measures require a legal basis. Can they all be advisory or are there some measures that require a legal basis? My view, and I think that of most people in this House, is that a legal basis should only be put in place where absolutely necessary. Everything should be advisory where possible but some measures require a legal basis.

At the moment, for example, there is a legal requirement for people to wear face masks on public transport, in retail outlets and in various other settings. There is a legal basis for the Covid pass. It is not up to a pub, restaurant or any other setting to decide whether they want to use the Covid pass and it is not up to the customers either. It is a legal requirement. There is also a legal basis for the international travel regulations. Do we as legislators believe that we need public health measures, and are going to need them for the next while, and that there are some where a legal basis is unfortunately required? I believe and I hope that most, if not all, of us believe the answer to both of those questions is "Yes" and, therefore, a legal basis is required. This is the Bill that gives us that legal basis. Without this Bill we would have no legal basis and everything would become advisory. That would pose a material risk to public health, life, healthcare services, education services, the economy and society. I am absolutely of the view that this Bill is required. I do not like this Bill. I do not want these powers. I wish these powers did not exist and I think we will all celebrate when they are gone but for now I believe they are needed.

So far we have lost 5,788 women and men in our country to Covid. As I am sure colleagues will know from talking to healthcare professionals, or friends or family who have lost their lives to Covid, it is horrific. I have spoken with nurses who have spent their careers in critical care. They are hardened, experienced medical professionals who have seen large numbers of people in very difficult circumstances, including dying from a wide variety of diseases, and they are telling me that they are traumatised by what they are seeing when it comes to patients dying from Covid in critical care. The combination of what this disease does to people, coupled with the isolation and loneliness of being in critical care at that time, is horrific. I am sure we all know people who have Covid or have had it. Many are now suffering from longer-term effects, some of which are serious. It has affected many people and families.

It is also essential that we protect non-Covid care. We have to protect our healthcare workers, including nurses, doctors, and all our healthcare professionals across the board. We have to protect patients. Every time our critical care beds get filled up with Covid patients there are other patients whose scheduled important surgeries and procedures are cancelled. It happens again and again. The impact on everybody else and on all our other patients is profound. It is only because of all of that that I am absolutely sure, as Minister for Health, that we need public health measures and that some of them need a legal basis. That is the only reason I am here asking for the House to support this Bill.

Two very reasonable counterarguments have been made. The first is the Sinn Féin position, which others also articulated during the Dáil debates on this Bill. I know Sinn Féin is voting against this. I fundamentally disagree with it doing so but that is its right. However, I acknowledge that some of the people who are going to vote against this Bill have supported and continue to support a public health approach. I want to acknowledge that very clearly. The first of the two arguments being made is that while Members support public health measures, there is insufficient Oireachtas engagement and oversight of the regulations. They say that what they are voting against is the mechanism.The amendments essentially give the power of regulation to the Oireachtas. The Oireachtas already has the power of regulation and every regulation laid before both Houses can be annulled by either House. The amendments we will be discussing next week go further and state the regulations do not go into effect without a vote in the affirmative from both Houses. The Seanad and the Dáil are the Legislature and they are required to vote through this legislation. A new argument is being put forward to say that not only should the Oireachtas be the Legislature but it should also be the regulator because no regulation can pass without votes from both Houses. That is not how regulation and statutory instruments work and we all understand that.

I took a look back on Oireachtas engagement in the past two weeks to see if there was a lot of it. I think we meet here and debate these issues regularly. There is Oireachtas engagement on legislation, which is exactly what we are doing now. All regulations are laid before the Seanad and the Dáil, all of them can be annulled by the Seanad or the Dáil and all of them can be debated by the Seanad and the Dáil. The Oireachtas organises its own business in that regard. All regulations are published online and daily information updates are provided, which I hope colleagues find helpful, on vaccines, cases, hospitalisations and critical care. A huge amount of such information is published every day. A lot of that came from requests from the Oireachtas. Members of the Oireachtas felt, quite rightly, that the most up-to-date information was required because we are dealing with a national emergency and so that has been provided, as is right and proper. There have not been enough Oireachtas briefings this year. I organised to hold one two weeks ago and I have organised to hold one this week as well in the context of the Omicron variant in particular. I want to see more of those briefings held.

Last Wednesday we had statements on Covid in the Seanad and on Thursday we debated the Health (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill 2021. Last Friday we had a session in the Seanad on the same Bill and there were three sessions in the Dáil, including Second Stage of this Bill, a Private Members’ Bill and oral questions to the Minister. Yesterday the Health Insurance (Amendment) Bill 2021 and this Bill were before the Dáil and today we are discussing this Bill in the Seanad. In the past week or two there have also been multiple Topical Issue and Commencement matters in the Dáil and Seanad, respectively. The Committee on Health has discussed the review of termination of pregnancy. I know this is not a matter for the Seanad but I asked for a note on how many parliamentary questions I answered last week to the Dáil and the answer is 499. Understandably, by far the largest number of parliamentary questions go to the Department of Health. As of midday yesterday I had answered in excess of 200 of those.

That gives a sense of the Dáil and Seanad engagement I have had this week and last week alone. We must always strive to have more Dáil and Seanad engagement and we must have more briefings. We have set a new process in place whereby all Members of the Oireachtas are notified of all regulations that are passed and there is more we are doing. I am engaging with Deputies and Senators across the Houses and across party and political lines to find out how we can make it better. Based on what I have been doing in the past two weeks, it is fair to say there is a significant amount of engagement between me, the Ministers of State at the Department of Health and the Oireachtas. That is not to say it is all right and that we cannot do more. We can do more.

The next argument is that the Dáil and Seanad need to pass all of the regulations. For this House to vote on any regulation, there presumably has to be a debate. I do not know how long the average debate is in the Seanad but in the Dáil an average debate where everyone gets a go is about three and a half hours. It would be reasonable to believe that for every regulation before the Dáil there needs to be a vote, that for every vote there has to be a debate and the minimum amount of time that tends to get set aside for a debate is three and a half hours. How much time would be required of the Oireachtas for it to become the regulator? Since I came into office in July 2020, I have signed 171 Covid regulations. If we assumed there would be a three and a half hour debate in the Dáil alone on 171 regulations, that is about 600 hours of debate. That is equivalent to six hours every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which would essentially prohibit any other legislation being debated and passed. That would take out 33 weeks of Oireachtas business, not including the time taken to call and pass the votes. The figures are broadly similar for the Seanad, so it would completely stop the Seanad’s ability to legislate on all of the many other things that need to be legislated on.