Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2020-03-27
============================================================

Martin Conway (FG), Administrative Panel

I am aware of a number of outlets that have just commenced doing deliveries that would not necessarily have planning permission to do so. I sincerely hope the spirit of what is being proposed in the legislation would be retrospective for the past couple of weeks as well and that nobody will suffer any punitive circumstances or consequences because they did what they believed to be the right thing, not just from the public's perspective but also in trying to save their businesses and keep their staff employed. I know of a number of situations where that was done. I was even contacted yesterday by another operator who was proposing to provide a takeaway service and that has to be welcome because there are many people who not only require it but also want to have some variety and take a break from their domestic cooking duties.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-03-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:15+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-03-27