Mattie McGrath criticises rushed COVID laws and leadership U-turns

I, too, want to support Amendment 1 and, indeed, I want to appeal again to the Minister that the time for this is just a disgraceful effort to fill it in a bill of this nature through here tonight and how he can do this when he is pronouncing his name as in opposition, his attendance at leaders meetings, Deputy Byte Barrett attended another as well and Deputy Naughton, and his questioning of the line from Dr Houlahan, at that stage, and the advice and what was happening, and then there's such an about U-turn, it just beggars belief, but this legislation is unworkable, and at least if it has vanished in October, you know, we'll have some chance, but we're playing the semantics, really, because I think, you know, when October comes, there'll be another lockdown, and then we'll be in the scenario all over again, so the people have grown weary, tired and fatigued, and COVID fatigued, and media fatigued, and Dr Houlahan fatigued, I see a post this evening where he's out again on the media, telling people not to bring their children to endos dying in spite of passing these rules, so what is going on? Is it a game of, you know, I know we have three leaders here, but two of them are certainly vying for the top job, but is it Dr Houlahan and Neffet vying for that as well, and trying to scare the people, and what is going on? Is it actually a death wish on hospitality? Is there a death wish on all of our people that we can't be entertained, or can't die, or we can't, you know, the musicians are confined to history? So, I mean, it's shocking. We're debating this rushed, inept, feeble, draconian, disastrous legislation, and he's out in the airwaves, Dr Houlahan, saying other stuff. Now, remember, Excuse me, I'm talking to the chair. I just wonder what's going on, because the people are sick and weary of it, and this is not the first time. I can go back to the Arknish, Lumen plant, and a Gregan family down in Limerick, and they had issues with Mr Houlahan, and now Taoiseach Martin. Never, no public inquiry, point on there. The self-again smear test, and many other things, and now we're, like, what's going on? The mind game's been played here. I just got the tweets into me of a statement this evening. So, is it irrelevant to what we're doing in this house? Because Neffet, our chair, we've abdicated our responsibility to Neffet, and Nyack, and God knows what other coin go. And God knows, in this legislation, the minister will have the power to introduce anything he wants to, in statutory incidents. And he dreams up. And he dreams up. And the worry I have is, as I said, there's 300 HSE staff, we're told, and there's 70 HSE staff to police this, and, of course, the Gadda Shekana. And, whomsoever, whatever organisation or outfit or cabal that the minister might dream of him putting into statutory incidents, and give him the badge, and off you go, like the sheriffs, like the posse. And, of course, someone said today they probably only work from 9 to 5, they won't give him overtime. But I'm sure someone would be very zealous to catch people and get stripes. This is silly, silly, patentic, just pure nonsense. And you know that, minister, because you were the exact opposite, and you admitted here in this chamber a couple of months ago that we were right in what we were saying, that you'd be saying the same thing if you were here. You said that yourself, you're on the record of saying that here in the house. So, how you can say that, have your position at that time, then say that even when you were ministered, that you were where we were, you'd be talking about what we were saying, or saying what we were saying. So, what, as I said earlier, what happens when you go into government? What big power comes over you that makes your hand sign all these things and changes you so much overnight? From being questioning, responsible, you know, engaging, and we all did engage, first at all those meetings, and we backed every decision the government took, because we were all worried and frightened of what might happen. But when we saw the figures didn't stack up anywhere, and we saw the damage done to our health services, the damage done to mental health, the damage done to non-cancer smear, cancer, late diagnosis, late diagnosis, misdiagnosis, and a plethora of other things, scoliosis, you name it, you can't get near a hospital or near a doctor, you can't. It's just big as believe. And after the 15, 16 months, you still haven't, I think it's nine extra ICU beds, with the four or five billion that has been spent extra on top of this 19 billion that was there. Nine extra beds. So, we keep locking down the country, because of inadequate HSE and health service, and we'll keep crucifying, literally, the small business, and all the tens of thousands of jobs, in all the sectors, because if we keep this going on much longer, we won't have an economy to recover. And we will then, and you might say, I'm a conspiracy theorist, we'll be holding to some greater power, that they'll be in charge. They'll be in charge, and they'll be whatever will come from their table. So, this is just mad, and more mad by the week going on here, and this bill being rushed like this, we put down, I think, 11 or 12 amendments, the ruling independent group, not one of them taken. And at least this is just taken, Minister. I mean, people might give some hope that we're not into this for the real long haul, that you have the ability again when October comes, and you'll extend it for another three months, just as a matter of form. And, you know, maybe come in here to the House, but you have your majority, you have your three parties, and you have some regional independents who are going to back you, come hell or high water. Whether they expect to fall into government when the Greens leave, or whatever, I don't know what it is, but they're naughty as well. But I say again, and I'll finish this, Clancola, we had a great celebration last Sunday in Dublin Castle. I didn't attend, and principal, how could we celebrate our Patriot Day? And at the same time, for getting our freedom, the freedom that we boast about, and we enjoy, and we thankfully, we've enjoyed for nearly 100 years. At the same time, legislation was being drafted, draconian, penal legislation, medical apartheid, and legislation. And there's another office of the AGs, and his staff, I'm not the name of the AG, personally, the staff, the drafting people. And you were down celebrating that. What hypocrisy? What rank hypocrisy? And sheer brass nick, and my God, to a new level, to have that going on, side by side. And we're here, four days later, taking away any rights that people have. Expect to have people declare their medical history to get into hospitality. When, as Deputy Nocton said, they can go into the cinema and get their Coke and popcorn or whatever, and there's no passport. So, most of the cinema chains now are very big as well, so it's all about big business, and all the small, homegrown, one-man, family business, destroy them. And the workers in those jobs are going to be forced into work when they can't get a vaccine, and then, if they want to have a social drink later on in the evening, or whatever, and they finish at the shift, they can't. They must go out in the street and have it. It's utter and patent nonsense, and you should be ashamed of anything to do with it, not to mind to say signing this, and whatever. You might give us some, you won't give us any insight into what stats or instruments you might sign, but I'd say they'll be interesting, because we won't be here six or seven weeks, and there'll be no account to anybody, not as much account anyway. As I said, the power has been wrestled from, we moved from the Dáil down here, but the power has been wrestled from us, not been wrestled, it's been given away by the government, by the Taoiseach, and others, to give them to unelected cabals, unelected cabals. Some people, their own right are good in there, certainly, but when you can't answer them, when I questioned Dr. Holden about the science in the Cabinet at home, some of you of my colleagues, some of you were here, the party groups, about the science around the closure of churches and the restriction of numbers. When I asked the third time, the teacher said, will you answer them, Dr. Houlihan, and he answered Godfrey, listen Deputy, we're dealing with the pandemic, we'll do the lockdown, and we'll do the science later. I threw my head at it. I wasn't invited, or none of the party leaders, to my knowledge, were invited to any briefing ever since, that was early November last year. So you've lost the public, you've lost the opposition groups because we received a vote tonight, and you've lost because you didn't continue with the briefing and informing us. When we started to ask questions, when the fear lifted, and the fog lifted, and we wiped the glasses, and tried to think, put on the cap, and what's happening here? Is this really what's happened, or is this a merry dance? And I'm not making little of anyone that died. And I'm also wanting a public inquiry, not in Ireland, but from people from abroad, into the slaughter that went on in the nursing homes, and the people that got infected in the hospital. I'm not blaming the frontline staff, I'm blaming the bad management, I'm blaming the fact that PPP couldn't be got for the nursing homes. Oxygen was secunded, en route to nursing homes, and was diverted away from the nursing homes. If someone doesn't have to go to The Hague and face war crimes against humanity for that, I give up. It's a shocking indictment on what happened. And now if we have another pandemic of any kind, we have nine extra ICU beds after all the money. You should be proud of yourself, Minister. Nine extra ICU beds after the four billion extra. Plus, the four billion we know about. We have no idea, Deputy Connieus, are trying to elicit answers yesterday about the costs of the vaccination and the costs of the different procurement process. There have been no procurement process since COVID started. Just spend whatever, just do it. No accountability. People rang me up to know for places where they were asked to do work there for the HSC. Just get it done. Work nightly, it doesn't matter. Price doesn't matter. Too carton to the wind. And if we had a huge, a lot of extra capacity, I'd say, great. If we had a field hospital built somewhere, they could build a hospital in China in, was it a week or two weeks. We had nine extra beds to our credit for four billion. Nine extra ICU beds for four billion. Then, of course, we had thousands of people who offered the call for Ireland, offered services free of charge and came home from abroad to offer. And very limited, I think a couple hundred, the figures I got a few last, were taken on. People gave their spirit of the metals, and they had to call it like Hela, and all that, and they wanted to help. And just the people, everyone got motivated and did their bit. We're all used to get it. That's a long way away from it now. There's a few in it. And I have to ask the question again, Deputy Hilly Ray yesterday, Danny. Why are you so against antigen testing? Is there some people involved in the system now, or close, that have a vested interest in the other tests? The name is done for me now, but you know the tests that we're all doing. Everyone is doing. So antigen, no. Every other country in Europe, and all of the world are using the antigen test. We're talking about it. We're setting up an expert group now to do the tests, to maybe look at it. 16 months on. I asked you yesterday in a dark question about would we have an investigation. You're telling me there's three or four investigations going on in different aspects of the HSE. I don't want that. I want an outside. Outside of this country with no connections with the HSE or the Department of Health. Independent inquiry as to how the government and their advisors and effort and the HSE and the Department of Health have handled this crisis. Nothing else will satisfy because we have enough of cover-ups, enough of lack of inquiries, enough of refusal, as I said to the Gregan family when their blood samples got lost and Dr. Hulleran refused to allow a public inquiry. Sitting beside him that day was the Minister of Health, Michal Martin. That's a long time ago, 203, so there's a lot of cover-up in those 40 years almost, 30 years. Cover-up after cover-up. Cover-up after cover-up. That's how we get here. And this is the biggest cover-up of all. So I'm asking you, I know you won't do it, but hopefully someday someone will find an inquiry that will get answers and get honesty and restore the integrity and respect that the people had for our public services. Hrmachul.