Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2020-07-22
============================================================

Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

According to the section on health in the programme for Government, the Government's priority is to protect public health by following public health advice. On the day that another front-line health worker has tragically lost his life as a result of Covid-19, does the Taoiseach really believe it is a good time to start abandoning adherence to public health advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, on the issue of foreign travel? What is happening is quite extraordinary. This morning, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, stated that he would make things clear but then went on to muddy further already murky waters by saying that, although the Government did not want people to go and would prefer if they did not, they could do so. That is essentially the advice. It is like arriving at a set of traffic lights where the green and red lights are simultaneously illuminated.

---

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/2020-07-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:27+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-07-22