Excerpts from the debate
Senator Keogan: “It is with great pleasure that I inform the Minister that I am one of the reckless elected Members who will vote against the motion. It really was a show in the Lower House yesterday – I will touch on that in a moment – but the Minister’s speech gives too great an opportunity for scrutiny.”
I know who I am and I know what I am about, and that is standing up for the people of this country and for their civil liberties and freedom of speech and holding this Government to account for its stubbornly stagnated, faltering Covid response.(See also senators blog )
Paul Cavan : “..Sinn Féin will oppose the motion. I wish to make it clear that we are not opposed to continuing reasonable levels of restrictions, such as face masks, testing requirements, travel restrictions and measures deemed essential to combating the spread of Covid-19.
We believe that the onus is on Government to bring forward more appropriate primary legislation that does not needlessly and unaccountably devolve the powers of the Oireachtas to the Minister for Health. It is the Oireachtas that makes the law, not the Government or Departments.”
We fully support vaccines. We have no time for people who doubt vaccines. We believe in the science.
Frances Black “It may be the case that we will require similar legislation past 9 February 2022 but we must ensure that it first undergoes the necessary scrutiny in both Houses.”
Michael McDowell “have some hesitation about vaccination but that is their problem, so to speak…..the responsible thing to do is to be vaccinated” and resume
Michael McNamara “While looking at this debate in my office I noticed that there was a tweet a couple of minutes ago and indeed it was from your good self, the Minister for Health, saying that everybody who opposed this was reckless. With regard to being reckless, it was reckless to have such a disregard for Parliament and for the Dáil, not for me or Deputy Connolly, or any of the Deputies here, but for the people that we represent because it is the essence of democracy.”
Catherina Connolly ” Our position remains the same: the system is discriminatory and has been developed without any meaningful consideration of human rights.”
Deputy Michael Collins“What people want is to be continuously properly reminded and so on but not dictated to, and this is a form of dictating to people.”
Michael Healy -Rae “We believe that it must be concluded that the public interest is not being served by giving the Government the powers to curtail people’s rights and freedoms at a time when over 90% of our people are vaccinated. During this pandemic the Government has rushed some extraordinary laws through this House and signed into law some extraordinary regulations. These measures have curtailed people’s freedoms in a most extraordinary way.”
Danny Healy-Rae “It is not fair to ask volunteers to demand vaccine passports of youngsters before they are allowed in to play basketball.”
Michael McNamarra “The Minister tweets during debates.”…But he is not respectful when he tweets during debates….
You limit democratic debate to two hours, and you stand here and lie to people. As long as the Minister does not take the opportunity to spread disinformation.
Michael Healy-Rea The Chair cannot allow a Minister to get away with saying that because we are not going to line up in a row obediently behind him like little ducks and support what he is saying, we are engaging in reckless behaviour. That is completely wrong.