Senator John McGahon - speech from 7 May 2021

Thank you very much, Lasky-Hurlock. Yeah, Minister, this was something I was kind of just kind of mulling over my head as I was coming down today. I wondered what I'd say, what I wouldn't say, and I didn't know what I was going to say before I came in. So I just sat here, I listened to all the debates, and I thought I'd just make my remarks off that. And Senator Buttermeir's last comment there, you know, we are back and we are open. Like, that straightaway, that just hit me, and it's like, yeah, absolutely. That's exactly what we as an island nation need to be sending out to the European Union, to the world. And it's this digital, this digital green card will allow us to do that. You know, I'll have absolutely no problem. I'll be the first in the queue to get it, and I'm really looking forward to it. And it allows for the safe travelling and the safe reopening of our European airlines. And a couple of months ago, we've talked, we've heard other colleagues discuss about how public sentiment swayed decisions a couple of months ago. You know, we had zealots trying to promote this concept of zero COVID on this island, which was never going to happen. It was, you know, ivory tower type stuff. And they were throwing to the wolves, all of these people who work in the aviation sector, of which Senator Doherty spoke much more eloquently than I about it. And those types of jobs, those wage packets, that wasn't a concern to people who are advocating for that. And it's this type of a service card that has got to allow those people to get back to work, to put food on the table, put money back in their wage packets after the last 12 months of what I can, you know, we're very lucky in this house. Most of our jobs have actually stayed pretty much the same. You know, can you imagine someone like that that's been out of work straight away for the last 12 months, and there will be some of the last people to go back into it. A final point I'd like to make is in relation to what Senator McDougall said, where we have a lot to learn from what's happened, and yeah, absolutely we do. And I really don't think it's going to be for another two years until countries right around the world can sit back with a good perspective and look at it and say, do you know what, Ireland did this wrong, Ireland did this right, or India did this really badly wrong, or Sweden had the right approach six months ago. So everything is so unprecedented, everything is so unprecedented, but at least this government had the ambition to try things, to try something out, to see if it worked. And that's what the point about it is that I think people miss at times, we had the ambition to try it. Mandatory hotel quarantine is a debate that others have taken up, and I, you know, my issue with that was that the people howling for the introduction of mandatory quarantine, where are they now? You know, they're gone, out the back door, you don't hear them talking about that anymore when it looks not to have worked out. But they were howling at the top of their voices for it back in January of this year. But it's a good example where, as Bill Gates have warned about something like this happening previously, if, God forbid, something like this happens again, and it's very likely it could, it's very important that countries like Ireland and in the European Union take stock of the responses, see what did work, see what didn't work, and that there's a dedicated, coherent emergency plan for an outbreak of a virus like this, which in the future could be far more deadlier, or perhaps less worse than what that's been. And I think that's what we need to take cognizance of, and I think something like this, this digital card is something that can be really used in the future, and I'd really welcome it.