Health (Preservation and Protection and other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2020-03-20
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

Is the Minister aware of any progress on the letter from dental practitioners regarding the aerosol spray? He might make a comment about it. I have had a lot of traffic in my email this morning about clarification on the information from the Chief Dental Officer.
I wish to comment on powers of detention, and hopefully it will not happen, and my question regarding prisons and new prisoners or arresting people with warrants. When we are saying we will detain someone, are we talking about within the prison system or the hospital system? We must be mindful that even though recruitment drives can happen everywhere else, they cannot happen within the prison system unless we bring back retired officers. The only other option is the Garda or the Army whose members I am sure would possibly be dispersed elsewhere. The goal is that if we are picking people up that we already have a warrant or we are detaining them for some reason that the goal would be to keep the prison population down and not increase it because the staffing issue would be difficult to address.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-03-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:47:28+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-03-20