The emergency provisions that are to be extended include Part 3 of the Health (Preservation and Protection and other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Act 2020, the Criminal Justice (Enforcement Powers) (Covid-19) Act 2020, the Health (Amendment) Act 2020, and Part 2 of the Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2021. The Health (Preservation and Protection and other Emergency Measures in the Public Interest) Act 2020 inserted sections 31A, 31B and 38A into the Health Act 1947. The first question we have to ask ourselves is whether we need public health measures to respond to Covid-19 and keep people safe from it.
We only need this legislation if we believe public health measures are required. It is only because of all of that that I am absolutely sure, as Minister for Health, that we need public health measures and that some of them need a legal basis.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 4,597 words from 11 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Robbie Gallagher and Seán Kyne; Níl, Senators Lynn Boylan and Paul Gavan.
Party shown is the one each member held on 2021-12-09, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.