CANCEL YOUR STAYCATIONS
Residents of lockdown-hit Kildare, Laois and Offaly should cancel any holiday plans made outside those three counties, says Calleary
Meat industry chiefs should cough up
‘I’ve heard the anger of people’
FAMILIES in Kildare, Laois and Offaly should not be going on holidays – even in Ireland – and should cancel any trips planned for outside those three counties, Agriculture Minister Dara Calleary has said.
He warned that it was regrettable that their summer breaks should be cancelled, but said that those three counties remain under lockdown.
And he was even unable to offer any cheer for local residents – that the restrictions might be lifted inside a fortnight.
‘There are no guarantees to the two weeks. This virus is virulent and requires constant attention,’ he warned.
Kildare, Laois and Offaly have come to a standstill after the outbreak of Covid-19 clusters among workers at a number of meat plants.
‘I’ve heard the anger. People are very angry. We have to get to the bottom of this,’ he said. He told RTÉ radio’s This Week that meat industry chiefs should cough up for the costs of Covid-19 testing of the 2,500 meat workers in the Midlands lockdown counties.
He called on meat processing bosses ‘to step up and pay’, rather than let the State pick up the tab.
‘This is a matter that doesn’t just affect them, it has a huge impact in the three counties,’ the minister said.
In a business that employs 15,000 workers, there were over 1,100 cases in meat factories before a stringent protocol was introduced on May 15.
‘We reduced those 1,100 cases to virtually zero by the end of June and through July. We have to review protocol, further strengthen it,’ said Calleary.
The minister is supportive of a ‘specific package’ to assist businesses and families in the Midlands, who have been forced to close their doors. And he has acknowledged the restrictions were ‘incredibly difficult’ on the local communities.
But the goal is to avoid further community transition through increased testing across the three counties, he said.
He said the Government should consider a ‘specific package’ to assist businesses and people in the three lockdown counties.
He accepted the restrictions were ‘incredibly difficult’ on those counties and he insisted that he would discuss with his Government colleagues what level of supports would be needed to help them. And speaking on the same radio programme, Professor Philip Nolan, the chairman of the
National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), said that he was very concerned by the rise in the number of coronavirus cases in the Midlands area.
He said that 777 cases had been reported over the past fortnight, a five-fold increase on the previous two weeks.
Of these 777 cases, 419 were in Kildare, Laois and Offaly.
‘A short, sharp intervention now could save us a great deal of difficulty in two or three weeks time,’ he noted, adding that it was ‘almost inevitable’ that a small level of transmission would have already occurred in those three counties.
Prof. Nolan added that the limited restrictions were ‘exactly the right thing to do’.
If they had not been introduced, the opening of schools and universities would ‘almost certainly have been threatened’, he added.