TAOISEACH MICHEÁL MARTIN has said that he is concerned about how “challenging” January will be, but said that people’s behaviour does matter in reducing the potential impact of the Covid-19 variant Omicron on the health service.
He said that the aim of the new restrictions announced last night was to reduce overall social contact by 20-30%.
During a 40-minute interview, the Taoiseach acknowledged the devastation that the latest restrictions will cause various sectors – the hospitality, aviation, and tourism sectors in particular, and young people whose social lives he said had been “truncated”.
Martin also said that NPHET and the Government have to “respect the demarcation lines” between the two; that Ireland waited too long to use antigen tests; and that NPHET had said a midterm break caused a significant rise in cases after that.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio’s Brendan O’Connor show, the Taoiseach said he was “very worried” and “apprehensive” about the potential impact the Omicron variant may have on Ireland’s healthcare service.
I hope I’m wrong… I hope all the modellers, I hope everybody is proven wrong about Omicron, but I fear not… I worry about it.
But he said that the evidence has shown that people have altered their behaviours and that does make a difference in reducing the impact of Covid, which is why the Government took action “early”:
There’s not an inevitability [to this], behaviour does matter. The combination of behaviour and boosters will matter in terms of reducing the impact of this – that’s the point and that’s why we’re moving early.
When asked whether these restrictions will be enough, Martin said “that’s a fair question, and I can’t give any guarantees in respect of that”.
“We need everything to go in our favour here.”
When asked about whether he was given the impression by NPHET in a meeting on Tuesday that the advice would be more ‘tweaks’ to restrictions already in place, rather than the more strict advice that was issued, Martin said “no”.
“I think they indicated quite clearly towards the areas they were looking at. They said ‘We want to look at hospitality, we’re going to look at large gatherings.’ So I said ‘Ok, let’s talk through this. What happens if we say close hospitality? What do you get you get big a massive relocation of people from one location which is reasonably regulated back into households?’ And they took on board what we were saying, and they were listening.”
He said he was “confident” that schools would open in January.
What NPHET are saying to us is that numbers in schools have stabalised over the last while… They’re suggesting that the midterm, the Halloween break created a fairly significant rise in cases.
“We’ve put a high premium on education and on schools, because it is so important to the development of the child being in a school.”
Sinn Féin spokesperson on enterprise Louise O’Reilly has called for talks between Government and stakeholders in the hospitality sector regarding supports and a longterm plan for the future.
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