In effect, these amendments would give the Oireachtas - the Dáil and the Seanad - the power to scrutinise the regulations that the Minister makes. That is very important. I have spoken previously, as have many Deputies, on the importance of parliamentary scrutiny. I spoke about it on Second Stage and cited an expert who appeared before the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, of which the Minister was once a member. I also referred to legal academics in Ireland who cited the importance of that in a de…

What was it about?

What did the Minister sign today? He makes the most ridiculous-----

Please do not say we can scrutinise regulations when we cannot.

It is a fact that we cannot scrutinise the regulations.

The Minister said the Dáil has the power to scrutinise and annul regulations. For the avoidance of any doubt, I completely accept that the Dáil has the power to annul regulations, but it does not have the power to scrutinise them and therein lies the problem. The choice is either to annul or not to annul. I am sure that if a motion were put down to annul a regulation, the response from the Government would be to say that chaos would reign because there would be no fallback. We would be told, "If you annul this, the…

Vótáil.

It is not agreed. That is the point. It is what we disagree on.

I am weary from talking about Covid. The people I represent are weary. We are all, I think, weary at this stage, nobody more, I suspect, than the Minister. Notwithstanding that, I am here, along with some of my colleagues, to oppose this Bill and to try to explain in brief why I am opposing it. In March 2020, in the first substantive debate on the pandemic after the last general election, I recall sitting over there beside Deputy Connolly and we were both very concerned, as I think many people were, by the extraord…

I do not know of any immunologist or serious academic on the issue of Covid-19 who says it will end. Safety is always relative and complete safety is impossible to attain. Increasingly, people have elected governments to keep them safe and governments have taken more and more powers to keep people safe. Yet, unfortunately, safety is unattainable. Again I ask when is the end. Are we talking about the end of Covid? If we are, I fear we are deluding ourselves. If we are talking about locking down and restricting essen…

I agree. I think we will see a sea change at the next election, it is to be hoped for the better, perhaps for the worse.

We will see. The assistant professor in Trinity said: The overarching finding of this report is a significant lack of transparency in how and why important decisions were made during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland. Transparency and clarity are key aspects of public health governance and one of our recommendations of this report is the need for far more. [That is, far more transparency.] If we don’t have clear lines of decision-making and accountability, and a clear sense of the power resting with the government, …

On a point of order-----

Did the Minister say that two thirds of all hospital patients are Covid-19 patients, or did I misunderstand him?

I am not seeking to control the debate.

Okay.

You did not give him the vaccine.

I am going to make the same points I made last January with regard to the mandatory hotel quarantine proposals that were introduced then. I questioned how on earth we were going to stop a variant coming in by limiting people coming into some frontiers of the State from some countries. At the time I asked the Minister if the purpose of mandatory hotel quarantining was to stop new variants coming in and he accepted that it was. If that was the purpose of it, and if that could be achieved, I would be prepared to look …

I am.

Just because something is necessary does not mean it is safe. This measure will do nothing to make us safer. It is simply tokenism of the worst kind. Before he contributes on the Bill, will the Minister tell us what the last chapter of mandatory hotel quarantining cost the State?