Criminal Justice (Enforcement Powers) (Covid-19) Bill 2020: Committee Stage
Dail Éireann — 2020-09-03
============================================================

Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

Under section 31A(7) of the Health Act, which outlines the penal provisions, a garda can direct a person to comply with any penal regulations. That is already included in the Health Act, which is mentioned in the first sentence. Where the Bill refers to a direction, specific to the implementation of the closing of a pub, that is very specific to the penal provisions that will be connected by the Minister for Health when the Bill is enacted.
It is not changing or adding anything. It is just making very clear that a garda has the power to enter a premises where he or she sees that somebody is contravening a penal provision under section 31A(7) of the Health Act, which refers only to penal provisions.

---

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/dail/2020-09-03/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-09-03