Paul Murphy: Rejects judges in licensing bill, cautions on reopening

Thanks, Las, Cian, Corlea. I want to make a few different points. First thing is just to say that I think it is a very, very poor approach by the government to take a bill which is to do with licensing, outdoor drinking, etc, etc, and to put in that bill an increase in the number of High Court judges. I think there is something quite undemocratic about that approach because it means it is not the focal point of a debate, of a discussion, etc. You stick it into what is an urgent piece of legislation, something that is not urgent and should be part of a proper discussion. I think it is a very, very poor approach by the government. Second point is in terms of the thrust of what is the main essence of this legislation. We agree, we think dealing with this is necessary, it is a sign of the extreme lack of preparation, not just pre-pandemic, but this pandemic has been with us for over a year, that we need legislation to deal with this to ensure that there aren't legal issues in terms of people drinking in these kind of extended outdoor areas. So this legislation is necessary, we should have done it a year ago, in advance of summer 2020, as opposed to summer 2021, but here we are yet again. The other point I would make in relation to that is that, so this is welcome, you know, an outdoor summer, all of that, we agree. But there is a tendency for that outdoor summer to be an outdoor summer in privatised spaces, spaces where you have to pay for an alcoholic drink or a coffee or whatever to be able to be there, and a real lack of focus by the government in terms of providing public common spaces where anybody can go without paying to a private business. I mean, it is encapsulated in quite an extreme way in terms of that square at Portobello. I was also in Stephen's Green the other day, and like all the bandstands are currently closed up. You know, what are obvious, quite safe places for people to gather, to be outside, being closed off for people. I think it is a very, very poor approach to facilitate only, and I am not against facilitating, I am in favour of facilitating it, but to facilitate only businesses providing outdoor public spaces, and not as the state to say we are going to provide quality public common spaces, which also includes, for example, our parks. There have been some improvements in some parks, but still, you have the issues relating to ongoing lack of investment, lack of investment in capital facilities over an extended period of time, lack of investment in terms of staff, park rangers, etc. You have the issues in terms of our bins overflowing, the issues in terms of an absence of toilets, absence of public seating places, and still a lot of our parks. And again, over a year into a pandemic, this is not what we should be facing. In terms of the broader issue, which clearly is a focal point of this discussion, I think that there has been a lot of nonsense spoken in the Dáil, outside the Dáil, over the last 24 hours. People giving the impression that we should have just ploughed on open indoor hospitality on the 5th of July, and everything would have been fine. Here, and a lot of backbench government TDs have been engaging in it, as well as others, saying that we should have just ploughed on. And I think if you go and check the record, they're the same people who last year, in October and November, were saying this is outrageous, we should be opening up hospitality, which then happened at the end of November and the start of December. And the consequence of that, and people can go and read the contribution sent by Deputy McSherry to the Taoiseach on a day when there was 1,000 cases a day last October. Eventually, their advice, their pressure, was heeded by the government. We opened up, and 1,000 people died in January, and 1,000 people died in February. And there's a correlation between those two things. There is, you know, the reopening of hospitality was a disastrous decision that resulted in many, many lives being lost. And it wouldn't be the same in a month's time now if we opened on July 5th, that's true. It wouldn't be the same because vaccination would take the kind of edge off that. But we also have to recognise where we're at. We're behind the North, we're behind England, Scotland, Wales, in terms of vaccination. The majority of people in the South still are not, either don't have one vaccination, either have one or zero vaccinations, which means they are quite vulnerable to the Delta variant. Yes, again, the most vulnerable are mostly, majority of them are vaccinated, not all of them, because of the gap in terms of AstraZeneca. But even if you're just talking about younger people, you're still talking about hospitalisations, you're still talking about long COVID, and you're still talking about hundreds or over 1,000 deaths would be a result of that decision to just open up and let it rip. And I think, again, like this isn't some abstract discussion, we can look north. In the north, you can look at the date that they opened indoor hospitality, 10 days on, you see sharp increases which are continuing in terms of case numbers, in terms of hospitalisations, and that will likely translate into increased deaths in the next period of time. So, to have opened up on the 5th of July would have been a disastrous decision, with no alternative, but not to open up. A couple of other points in relation to that. One is that the consequence of opening up would not only have been increased cases, long COVID, hospitalisations, and deaths, but would also likely have been the need to go into reverse, to begin to close things down, not only indoor hospitality, but probably also outdoor hospitality. That's the reality of what going down that road would have meant, and that's not a road that the vast majority of people would want to go down. People really could not stomach going into another lockdown. And the other point I'd make is the outsized role played by business owners, the owners of restaurants, and the owners of pubs in public debate. No question they should be listened to, no question they should be part of the debate, no question the government should be taking measures to ensure that small pub and restaurant owners are not impacted badly by this. No question. But I want to know, where are the workers' representatives? Did the government meet any workers' representatives today? And where are the workers in the media? Where are the young workers who are going to be asked, in their scenario, to come in and serve both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and put themselves significantly at risk? I also think that the idea of opening, in terms of the unvaccinated young people being asked to serve the vaccinated and so on, I think that simply will not work. I don't think that is a workable option. I'd make the point that there was an alternative. Nobody else in this stall, nobody else in politics in this country was calling for it, apart from the socialist left, people before profit, over a month ago warned that we were in a race between the variant and the vaccine. And we not only warned, we also gave an alternative, a way of avoiding the situation, a way of getting ahead in the race, which would have been to move to do mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers from England, Scotland and Wales a month ago. If we had done that, we could have protected our reopening, we possibly could have gone ahead with July 5th and so on, but the government didn't go down that road. In effect, they just accepted, oh, it's inevitable, the Delta variant will spread, we can't even slow it down and give our vaccinators a chance to get on top of it. The final point I will make, and I raised it this morning with the Taunashta in the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, is that it is quite incredible that, again, we're over a year into a pandemic. We're talking, the government's plan at the moment is to open up and to compel young workers, unvaccinated, to go into hospitality settings and serve people. And there are no legal guidelines, no legally enforceable guidelines in relation to ventilation. Like the thing we have learned about COVID over the course of the last year is how airborne it is, how important ventilation is. And the Taoiseach, or the Taunashta, admitted that there is no enforcement mechanisms. So we have a voluntary guidelines for indoor hospitality issued by Board Fallscher and the HSA in conjunction with the HSE. We have a new version of the Work Safety Protocol with lots of reference to good things that should be done in terms of ventilation. But it has no legal basis. It is just a collection of voluntary public health advice. We should have maximum CO2 levels laid down in law, monitored. Let's provide or subsidize CO2 monitors for pubs and hotels and restaurants and all the rest, and then monitor them and say it has to be below this a certain level and proper ventilation measures have to be put in place. It is, you know, somewhat incomprehensible that we're at this point in time and we don't have law in relation to ventilation considering how important it is in terms of workers' health and safety. We're a meal market.