Taoiseach asked to clarify if people in Dublin can go to weddings or on trips outside capital

The Government needs to put in place a contingency plan for the Cabinet and the Houses of the Oireachtas in the wake of "one of the most bizarre days ever", Labour leader Alan Kelly said.

Mr Kelly appealed to Taoiseach Micheál Martin to be clear in his advice on travel for people in Dublin who, he said, wanted to know if they could go to weddings or on trips outside the capital.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said there was “chaos and not clarity” for people travelling from or to Dublin. It was an “absolute mess” and “people are beside themselves”, she said.

Ms McDonald said people had lost confidence in the Government’s handling of the situation.

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“You’ve left people hanging in a very, very cruel limbo.”

However, Mr Martin insisted that the advice provided by the Government on Tuesday in its Living with Covid plan was clear.

“I’ve made it clear to people that they should not travel outside Dublin if possible,” he said.

He also said Ronan Glynn, the acting chief medical officer, “in what might be described as an overabundance of caution”, believed Ministers should restrict their movements on Tuesday in the wake of the news that Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly was to be tested for Covid-19.

Mr Martin insisted there was no “mystery” about a decision to adjourn and later resume the Dáil on Tuesday. He said there had been contact between the secretary general of the Department of Health, Dr Glynn and the Government Chief Whip on the issue.

He said the request for restriction had implications for the Dáil and this led to the House being adjourned. When he was informed it could be done, it was clarified that Ministers of State could deal with some of the House’s business.

Ms McDonald welcomed the negative test result for Mr Donnelly but said his results arriving within hours did not tally with the public’s experience.

She said the Government had pledged months ago that there would be 100,000 tests a week and that people would get test results within 24 hours, yet neither of these things had happened.

Insisting that this week the HSE would see the highest number of swab tests ever taken, Mr Martin said that last week there had been almost 80,000 tests conducted. He said 700 people would be employed for swabbing and 500 for contact tracing.

Mr Kelly appealed to the Taoiseach to put a plan in place so that what happened in the Dáil on Tuesday would not happen again. He also urged the Government to change its communications strategy because the majority of infections are from people under the age of 45, and “how we communicate with them is different to traditional media”.

Holding up a copy of an Irish Times with a graphic explaining the five level plan, Mr Kelly said: “Fair play to The Irish Times, this is the best example of how to communicate this”.

The Taoiseach said a leaflet is going out to every household and there was extensive planning around communication of the Government’s roadmap.