An extended lockdown is only way to control virus, insists Kelly
THE public wants a tough new ‘zero-tolerance’ strategy on pandemic response and lockdowns, Labour leader Alan Kelly has claimed.
Mr Kelly warned this would include border checkpoints, garda checks in airports, tougher quarantine proposals and a recognition that vaccination is not a silver bullet.
In a wide-ranging interview on RTÉ Radio 1’s This Week, Mr Kelly also warned that politics had fallen behind the people in terms of what the public now wanted.
Mr Kelly said of the war against Covid: ‘It is going to take this year. I think the public are ahead of us on this issue.’
The Labour Leader said a longer lockdown should be implemented to suppress Covid-19 via a ‘national aggressive suppression strategy.’
He said he did not like the phrase ‘zero-tolerance’ but, essentially, such an approach would be required. Speaking on This Week, he said the border should be policed to stop non-essential travel and that mandatory periods of quarantine should be introduced for all visitors arriving here.
Mr Kelly also said it was inevitable that the Leaving Cert would be cancelled and that it needed to be done within the next two weeks.
He intimated that we all ‘know this is going to happen.’
Mr Kelly also conceded that both the Government and the opposition had made mistakes in December and that when it came to that lockdown, ‘it was the wrong choice made by absolutely everyone’.
His position now on the various level of restrictions was that the country could not be ‘hopping in and out of different levels of lockdown’ and that we needed: ‘once and for all to make serious decisions in relation to where we are going.’
He also warned it was becoming increasingly clear that ‘the vaccine rollout will not be the panacea we thought it is.’ In particular, he warned, ‘the vaccine rollout is going to take a lot longer’.
The Tipperary TD said his recommendation of mandatory quarantine would include periodic border checks on all major routes to and from the North.
Mr Kelly that this was the route necessary with the alternative being to ‘lock up our own people for want of a better phrase.’
Mr Kelly said restrictions should remain until ‘community transmission is more or less eradicated’.
‘There is also big concern with the variants coming in if the poor regions in the world are not going to be vaccinated and could find their way back to Ireland,’ he said.
The Labour leader also warned: ‘I believe people are at the end of their tether.
‘I don’t believe the short-termism that got us to where we are today can be continued.’
‘Vaccine rollout is not a panacea’