Covid-19: Opposition grows to plans to delay return of indoor hospitality

The Government is facing mounting internal and external resistance to plans to delay the reopening of indoor hospitality and only allow fully vaccinated people inside.

At a lengthy and fraught meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party on Wednesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin was told that Fianna Fáil was now "toxic" and "irrelevant" to young people who were "up in arms".

Mr Martin told the meeting his conscience was clear on the Government’s decision to temporarily delay indoor dining. He said the easy thing would have been to reopen but told his TDs “we took the tough decision”.

He is understood to have said that while the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) had “set the bar high” in terms of allowing restaurants and pubs to reopen, the Government would keep “an open mind” on how they could be reopened in future.

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Defending the Government’s handling of the pandemic in the face of criticism from his party, he also said an average of 2,245 more people would have died if Ireland had followed the Swedish strategy which he said some people had called for.

The Taoiseach earlier insisted in the Dáil it was the right decision to pause the reopening, adding that “we don’t want to divide society. We want to protect people.”

Mr Martin stressed how stark the warnings were and quoted Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who said that the Delta variant of Covid-19 "will rip through an unvaccinated population".

‘Hurricane’ coming

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly told the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting that the Nphet modelling did not include changes made by the National Immunisation Advisory Committee to allow younger people to be given AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines. He also told the meeting that "the biggest hurricane that has ever hit Ireland is coming".

Earlier on Wednesday, the chief medical officer, Tony Holohan, also told opposition parties that the modelling used by Nphet on dramatic increases of case numbers and deaths from the Delta variant did not take into account the Niac changes. This is despite the fact that Cabinet sources said the Taoiseach told Ministers this week that it had been factored in.

Amid continuing pressure, a Government delegation led by Mr Martin told representatives of the hospitality industry that a mid-July reopening of indoor hospitality might still be possible if new data from the UK indicated lower hospitalisation and death rates from the Delta variant. A date as early as July 19th was mentioned at the meeting.

Publicans and restaurant groups were told the vaccine certificate for indoor dining may never be needed, but that the Government felt it would be useful to develop it in case the Delta variant had a more detrimental impact than expected or in case another variant developed in future.

‘Unworkable and unfair’

The Licensed Vintners Association, the Vintners Federation of Ireland and the Restaurants Association of Ireland "pushed back heavily" on the vaccine certs as being "completely unworkable and unfair", sources said. The LVA said that if the Government implemented the system, it would "really see what chaos in the hospitality sector looks like". They also called on hospitality workers to be prioritised for vaccines.

A working group will now be set up to examine how to reopen the remainder of the hospitality industry safely in the coming weeks.

The Government is planning to continue setting up the indoor vaccine cert scheme, but is understood to be open to examining allowing antigen or other forms of testing be used alongside it.

In Fianna Fáil, Cork East TD James O’Connor said that, as the youngest member of the parliamentary party, he found it harder to defend Fianna Fáil and the Government, warning that the party was becoming “irrelevant and toxic” to young people. He is one of numerous TDs who on Wednesday night called for antigen testing to be rolled out.

Two Fine Gael TDs also said they would not support the measure to introduce a "vaccine pass" if there was a vote called in the Dáil on it.

Former minister Michael Ring said he would not vote for the measure. "We will let thousands of people in to the country but we ourselves can't have a meal," he said.

Kilkenny TD John Paul Phelan described the announcement and subsequent media interviews as “car crash stuff”.