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LAST UPDATE | 24 Mar 2020
A RAFT OF new public health measures have been announced to combat the spread of Covid-19.
It follows a meeting of the National Public Health Emergency Team this morning, with these measures then finalised at a meeting of Cabinet this afternoon.
The Taoiseach said this afternoon measures were agreed in three areas – preventing the spread of the virus, helping those who lost their jobs and new emergency legislation. Minister for Health Simon Harris says all of this will seem “surreal” to people, but the government would be honest with the Irish public throughout this crisis.
These measures will take effect from tonight and remain in place until Sunday 19 April.
All non-essential retail outlets are being told to close, with restaurants and cafes told to close unless they can offer a take-away option. Supermarkets and pharmacies will remain open.
Other retailers deemed essential include opticians, fuel stations, laundries, banks, post offices, credit unions and hardware stores.
There will be no restrictions on the amount of times a person can leave their home a day but people are being told not to exceed groups of four people.
Individuals should work from home unless workplace attendance is essential.
All theatres, clubs, gyms/leisure centres, hairdressers, betting shops, marts, markets, casinos, bingo halls, libraries and similar outlets are to close.
All sporting events are cancelled, including those behind closed doors. All playgrounds and holiday/caravan parks to close.
Taoiseach says he would not describe these measures as a ‘lockdown’ pic.twitter.com/tcaPtZUcR6
— Christina Finn (@christinafinn8) March 24, 2020
All hotels are to limit occupancy to essential non-social and non-tourist reasons.
All places of worship are to restrict numbers entering at any one time to ensure people observe social distancing. All organised social indoor or outdoor events of any size are not to take place.
All crowded places, including public amenities, should be avoided.
All non-essential indoor visits to other persons’ homes should be avoided.
Gardaí are to increase interventions where venues or outlets are not in compliance with, or where groups of people are not adhering to recommended social distancing measures.
Schools – originally told to close until 29 March – will not re-open on Monday with the closure order set to be extended.
The Taoiseach said that contingency plans are being worked on to allow the Leaving Cert exams to go ahead. ”We’ll do everything possible to make sure the Leaving Cert goes ahead,” he said.
On all of these measures, Varadkar said: “I wouldn’t use the term lockdown.”
The term seems to mean different things for different countries, and what we need now is clarity, the Taoiseach said. “I think it’s a term that actually causes more confusion than clarity,” he said, so it’s not one he’ll be using.
Chief medical officer Tony Holohan said the measures have had to be stepped up due to the fact more than 1,000 cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed in the Republic.
He said: “Forty-five per cent of the cases have been community transmission where we have not been able to identify the original source through contact tracing and one in four of the cases are healthcare workers.
We need to move rapidly, comprehensively and quickly. That is why we have stepped up the measures.
Welfare and businesses
Varadkar confirmed the government is to increase the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Support payment for people from €203 to €350 who have been laid off due to the virus.
The payment will also apply to the self-employed who are affected by Covid-19.
An emergency wage subsidy scheme will also come into effect whereby the government will pay 70% of a worker’s salary up to a cap of €410 per week net – equivalent to the after-tax income of a worker on around €40,000.
An eligible employer will be supported by up to 70% of the income but the employer is expected to make “best efforts” to maintain as close to 100% of normal income as possible for the subsidised period. There will be “severe penalties” for any abuse of the scheme.
Employers must self-declare to Revenue that they have experienced significant negative economic disruption due to Covid-19, with a minimum of 25% decline in turnover, and an inability to pay normal wages and other outgoings, in accordance with guidance to be issued by Revenue.
Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty said that original estimates of 400,000 job losses due to the crisis was a “conservative figure”.
Varadkar also said private hospitals “will act effectively as public hospitals” for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said: “Private hospitals have agreed to do this on a not-for-profit basis.
“Public and private patients will be treated equally.”
Health Minister Harris said patients with Covid-19 will be treated for free in a single national hospital service.
Harris said all private hospitals will be public or run by the State for the duration of the pandemic.
He said: “There can be no public vs private here.”
Economy
At the same press conference, the government said that alongside the public health crisis, the economy is also in jeopardy.
“It needs speed and it needs scale,” Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said, acknowledging that citizens are under “intense strain”.
The measures to cover Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment as well as the 70% wages for workers will cost an estimated €3.7 billion over a 12-week period.
“We must act now to avoid an even greater economic challenge in the future,” he said.
There’ll also be support for renters – through legislation to prevent rent increases or the termination of tenancies – and mortgage holders.
So far, 1,125 people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 in Ireland and six people have died. It is expected that the number of cases will rise significantly in the coming days and weeks.
With reporting from Christina Finn
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Rabbit Ebola. Sounds like an awful death for an animal.
No danger to humans. What about dogs, cats and other wild animals that prey on rabbits?
@John O’Connor: they are all safe for m it but can carry it on their fur or cloths to other rabbits.
Coursing clubs are shamefully and unbelievably, lobbying for the re-issuing of the license taht would enable them to resume capturing hares with nets for use in coursing.
The so-called Coursing Support Group Kerry is demanding that the license be restored, claiming that coursing clubs won’t do any harm if they are permitted to capture hares, as “they’d never course a sick or diseased hare”. Kerry Radio carried the following report today on this:
And backwoods politicians are also pressing for a resumption of nationwide hare capture and live coursing, with an emergency motion on the subject tabled at a meeting of Kerry County Council!
I hope the Minister and the NPWS will reject the pseudo-scientific nonsense emanating from the pro hare coursing lobby and its political apologists.
Coursing practices would greatly increase the risk of the disease spreading: Coursing clubs use nets to catch the animals. They handle them casually and roughly, place them in little boxes (confinement that is totally unnatural and terrifying to them), transport them in vans or car boots to various locations and then pack them into compounds or paddocks where these normally solitary creatures find themselves in a cramped and unnatural environment: conditions ideal for the spreading of the disease.
Coursing clubs have been asserting in recent weeks that if they are permitted to resume capturing hares with nets for their fixtures they will vaccinate the hares they capture against the disease. Some politicians have backed them in this desperate ploy.
What they fail to mention, however, is that 1) the vaccine, called ‘Eravac’, which is licensed in Europe, is not available in Ireland and 2) more importantly, it cannot be applied to hares…just rabbits.
Coursing clubs are NOT conservationists, as they’d like us to believe. They are by definition people who capture hares for the express purpose of setting dogs on them for “sport.”
The ban on hare netting must remain. An entire species should be put at risk just to accommodate people who get their kicks from watching an animal running its life.
@John Fitzgerald: hi john I don’t hear of or see you standing against the travellers whom hunt with lurchers sometimes four and five at a time. The hare has no chance. I’m constantly ringing the Gardaí running them out of land beside me. The Gardaí can do nothing. Just like you.
They kill whatever moves in the land then throw it in a ditch. It’s a very common practice of theirs and what worse it’s all year round.
@John Fitzgerald: Well John, its a pity that the npws and the journal are full of antis like yourself.
Coursing will be back this year, if left to the coursing clubs the hare will multiply and strengthen, also strong talk about the antis planting an infected rabbit, nothing would surprise me with this crowd.
@francis walsh: hilarious that you use “antis” as if it’s a bad thing to be against wild hares being trapped and hoarded together before having to run for their lives just for your bloodthirsty entertainment.
@Stephen:
I’m opposed to all forms of so-called recreational hunting/coursing of hares, whether the ones that are banned or those permitted by law. The netting ban should remain, but of course the Gardai should pursue illegal coursers/hunters and prosecute them. Landowners are getting hell from those gangs. It is important, however, not to blame any one section of society for such activities. The vast majority of travelers are law-abiding people who abhor any form of animal cruelty.
@francis walsh:
“Antis” are people opposed to animal cruelty such as hare coursing…meaning the overwhelming majority of the Irish people. Your allegation re the planting of an infected rabbit is beyond ridiculous and shows how desperate your side has become in recent weeks.
@francis walsh: and pigs will fly ! , how is it that inspite of all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary you can still put these selfish, ignorant views out on social media.
Coursing clubs and those who support them need to wake upto the horrific abuse they inflict on a gentle creature like the Irish hare.
One of the benefits of “breeding like rabbits” is that those rabbits who are fortunate enough to have the right genetic makeup to withstand this virus can rapidly repopulate and make for lost numbers.
Its only a matter of time before some such disease starts to affect humans as well after all there are a lot of similarities between today’s human behaviour and rabbits.
Will the cruel hare coursing stop? Illegal hare coursing will still continue as part of their backward “culture”
@Niall O’Neill: not backward Néill, just great.
Only 2 hares found and the npws which is full of animal anti groups have suspended greyhound coursing, another kick in the teeth to rural Ireland, the government have passed the can and the antis win again.
@francis walsh: “The disease has been found in 12 animals but the actual number of infected rabbits and hares could be far higher as samples in a number of these cases were taken from one animal drawn from a larger group of dead animals…The disease can be transmitted directly through fluids such as saliva and urine or indirectly through clothes, animals or insects..”. You think satisfying your bloodlust is more important than trying to stop the spread of this deadly virus in the hare population?
@francis walsh: “The disease has been found in 12 animals but the actual number of infected rabbits and hares could be far higher as samples in a number of these cases were taken from one animal drawn from a larger group of dead animals…The disease can be transmitted directly through fluids such as saliva and urine or indirectly through clothes, animals or insects..”. You think satisfying your bloodlust is more important than trying to stop the spread of this deadly virus in the hare population?
@francis walsh:
Can’t take chances. Hare coursing already stands condemned and utterly discredited on animal welfare grounds (the hares are mauled and have their bones broken, and if they survive they are passed on to other clubs for re-coursing) but now this horrible “sport” poses a clear existential threat to the the Irish Hare as a species.
@francis walsh:
No, it’s a pro-rural Ireland move to suspend hare netting by gangs of coursers…the disappearance of our iconic Irish Hare from the countryside would be severe blow to rural Ireland and to our wonderful wildlife heritage that is under pressure on many fronts.
@John Fitzgerald: you’re ignorance is consistent John, you really don’t have an idea of what you are talking about.
@francis walsh: what has John said that’s incorrect?
@francis walsh:
Oh but I do know “Francis”…this time the science is against you. It’s not an animal protection group that suspended the hare netting license. A Government department acted in response to a crisis, on the best advice from a team of experts. Any resumption of hare netting by gangs across the country would place the entire species at risk. Imagine, at this time…gangs of whiskey-slugging gougers handling hares, passing them around, shoving into little boxes for transportation around the country…and then dozens of hares at a time bunched into paddocks where they await contrived chases. Add to that the widespread trafficking of hares between clubs (a hare can fetch up to a hundred euro) and you have a recipe for ecological disaster. Coursing clubs do NOT capture hares to vaccinate them or somehow “care” for them. They capture them for the sole and express purpose of setting dogs on them. Fact. So should the Irish Hare have to face possible wipe-out just to appease these gangs of predators?
@John Fitzgerald: you’re a langer.
Wasn’t there cases of a similar infection in Deer in the US over the last couple of years.
Nature’s way is survival of the fittest
@Dave Walsh: Or man’s way of controlling the amount of rabbets
@Alan Scott: that’s what guns are for…
Josephine they were probably doing too much Swinging
Thankfully there is a vaccine out for it. I had my bunny vacinated 2 weeks ago. Kept him out of the garden till then. On a side note. Anyone from Cork know how they rabbits on the Dunnkettle roundabout are doing?
@Edmund Murphy: the vaccine works for rabbits but not hares.
@EillieEs: yep I read your comment on that earlier. Glad it at least works on Rabbits.
@Edmund Murphy: absolutely, just a shame it doesn’t work for hares too
Who framed Roger Rabbit?
There’s a an aids like virus wiping out cats as well…they go off food and waste away in a week..very distressing… Vaccinate…
Elmer Fudd is on the case . We’re hunting wabbits
Is that the mix a my toties ?
Methinks China needs to sharpen up their disease controls, given the widespread pig, poultry, & now the furry wildlife virus outbreaks .
For a country with unlimited state controls, gigantic food production needs, surely they should get their livestock health under strict control.
We don’t need these almost seasonal plagues to spread everywhere.
Methinks China needs to sharpen up their disease controls, given the widespread pig, poultry, & now the furry wildlife. For a country with unlimited state controls, gigantic food production needs, surely they should get their livestock health under strict control.
We don’t need these almost seasonal plagues to spread everywhere.
have your say