Independent TD Carol Nolan has dubbed NPHET’s call to extend the lockdown as “fanatical,” and said that they have reached “zero common sense.”
Speaking this week, the Laoise-Offaly TD slammed NPHET’s call to delay the re-opening of indoor dining for restaurants, cafés, pubs, and summer camps for children “for weeks.”
“I think there will be thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of workers waking up this morning in rural and urban Ireland in absolute frustration and indeed despair at the continuing insistence of NPHET that we adopt this kind hyper risk-averse approach,” said Deputy Nolan.
“Restaurateurs, publicans, coffee shop owners and those who are trying to keep their towns and villages from utter ruin will be devastated if the planned for re-opening does not go ahead. People’s patience has simply run out.”
The Deputy, who is a member of the Rural Independent Group, hit out at the perceived lack of consideration for any dangers other than public health.
“Employers are exhausted and they are broken, financially and emotionally by the constant and apparently never-ending dominance of public health advice to the exclusion of all other considerations,” she said.
“We will never hit zero-Covid. But we have reached zero-common sense.
“We know that the Delta variant poses a risk. But we also know that Ireland is unique in all Europe in terms of the scale and level of restrictions that have imposed. That absolutely must end.”
In conclusion, Deputy Nolan asserted that NPHET have “fanatical tunnel vision,” and that they are conducting themselves in an “autocratic” way.
“People need to live again,” she said.
“They need hope and not the ongoing imposition of the autocratic, fanatical tunnel vision of NPHET for whom no amount of even the most prudent risk seems to be acceptable.”