Senator John McGahon- speech from 25 May 2021

Leader, today the issue that I'd like to raise is in relation to swimming lessons and when they can resume in the Republic of Ireland for children and the reasons why I'm doing that is we have seen a really good return to normality of kids being able to play outside, get back to sport and it's been really really good to see and now I'd like to see and ask the government about when we plan to do that for swimming lessons and the reason I'm doing that is I was speaking with the manager of Aura Swimming Pool in the Dock last night who outlined a couple of things and it's not really until you think about it and you realise yeah god that actually makes perfect sense and perhaps as a government we should be looking at the nuances of situations and I think this is something where nuance really needs to be taken into consideration and the reason behind that is numerous scientific studies have identified that the COVID virus is killed within 20 seconds in a swimming pool facility due to the chemical disinfectants in the water. The second point about it is modern swimming pools because of the high humidity have ventilation systems that provide a total of 10 complete air changes per hour and so at a time when discussions are already taken in place about a resumption of indoor dining it needs to be noted that swimming pools are one of the more much safer indoor environments in terms of sporting activities and I think that's just a part of the debate that's actually been missing in recent weeks and in previous times in this house I've spoken about cross-border trade, cross-border travel, there's also the issue then of cross-border swimming because and hear me out on this because the reason is swimming lessons have now opened up in Northern Ireland yesterday so the problem is now we have an issue of viability in the median term for border town leisure facilities who have no idea about when they're able to reopen and as a result parents naturally who want to try and keep their kids up to a good level of swimming will go over to Newry, will go across border, will put their money there away from the local economy and border towns so I would really appreciate it if the government could make a strong outline of what we want to do when we see a return to swimming lessons for children. We've been in sport over the last couple of weeks and now we need to look for sports that have to predominantly take place inside as well.