‘A dog’s dinner’: Bill to enforce the rules comes under attack
THE Covid-19 legislation brought in to enforce Level 5 restrictions has been dubbed a ‘dog’s dinner’ by Senator Michael McDowell.
The Bill, which President Michael D Higgins signed into law on Sunday, allows for the organiser of a house party to be charged with a €1,000 fine.
It also has a sliding scale of onthe-spot fines that range from €50 to €500 for offences such as not wearing a face covering.
But Mr McDowell, a barrister, former tánaiste and ex-justice minister decried the new laws as ‘useless’ because of a ‘massive loophole’ which makes i t almost impossible for gardaí to shut down house parties. The Independent senator told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘In the Seanad, a huge loophole was discovered in their Bill [to legally enforce the Level 5 restrictions] before it was passed.
‘The Seanad was adjourned twice to allow the Minister [ Frank Feighan] to consider the situation and they decided to plough on with it regardless. They ploughed ahead and made it into law. It is a real dog’s dinner law. It is useless as a law. The result is the capacity of guards to stop house parties is practically zilch.’
Mr McDowell explained that the new powers do not account for house parties where the owner did not organise the illegal gathering – such as a daughter and/or son who planned parties.
He said: ‘The guards have the power to go to a home [where
‘They ploughed on regardless’
there is a suspected house party] and speak to the occupier. They define the occupier as the owner of the house who resides there or anybody else who resides there with his/her permission. The result of that is: if your son or your daughter has a party in the house, they are not the occupier. So, when the guards arrive at the house, the only person they can give the direction to stop the whole thing is the person defined as the occupier.
‘They have excluded the person who is at the door from that category unless he actually owns the premises.’ The Government brought the legislation through the Seanad on Friday night. Senator McDowell said t hey were so embarrassed by the holes pointed out that the session had to be stopped for Frank Feighan, Minister of State for Public Health, Well Being and National Drugs Strategy, to get advice on how exactly to proceed.
‘It is a complete disaster,’ Mr McDowell said. ‘It just doesn’t work and we pointed that out to them. In fairness, Barry Ward agreed with my analysis.
‘It was a complete disaster. They were so embarrassed they stopped the debate twice to try and get
939 Number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Ireland yesterday
advice as to whether they could remedy it.’ Fine Gael senator and barrister in criminal law Mr Ward raised a number of amendments to the Health Act Bill, which he told the Seanad made the law ‘unworkable’. Mr Ward then withdrew the amendments after the Government refused to accept them.
One Government source told the Mail: ‘There isn’t a barrister in the country who couldn’t get a client off these charges. I understand Frank Feighan did ring the Attorney General, or whoever was responsible, but certainly the Attorney’s view was sought. They accepted the legislation was flawed but the direction from [Health Minister’s Stephen Donnelly’s office] was get the legislation through. Because Frank had been told, “Get the legislation passed”.
‘The word that came back was “do not accept the amendments” because if you do it has to go back to the Dáil which pushes it into this coming week.’ The source added that the legislation may still be amended to fix the loopholes through further amendments.
A Garda source told the Mail that it was too early to tell how effective the new laws would be, but added that gardaí would be continuing to police by consent.
‘ The response hasn’t really changed. It is going to be the same four Es: encouragement, engagement, explain and finally enforcement,’ the source said.
‘We will be communicating how we think the laws are going. At the moment, it is too early to say. The approach to the whole situation doesn’t change.
‘If it r e al l y is necessary, enforcement will be used, but hopefully it won’t get to that stage,’ the source added.