Stephen Donnelly: Return of indoor dining 'depends on engagement' between Government and hospitality
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said he 'would very much hope' that hospitality can reopen for fully vaccinated people by the end of July. File picture: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie
The return of indoor dining "depends on engagement" between the Government and the hospitality sector, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has claimed,
Mr Donnelly, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, and Tourism Minister Catherine Martin are meeting representatives from restaurants and bars this week after the Government delayed reopening indoor dining until after July 19.
That meeting comes in the wake of the postponement of the return of indoor dining, which was due to happen on Monday, July 5. No new date has been announced, but a plan is expected by July 19.
Mr Donnelly said he "would very much hope" that hospitality can reopen for fully vaccinated people by the end of July.
He defended the use of domestic Covid-19 passports to enable reopening, noting that places such as Denmark have used the practice since March.
In many other states, negative PCR tests are also accepted, as well as vaccination status. Such a move has not been mooted in Ireland.
"The advice that we're taking is to move in line with a lot of other European countries. We've just heard from Copenhagen for example," Mr Donnelly said.
"The advice is not that indoor hospitality has to stay closed through July, August, and September as potentially the Delta variant gets worse.
"The advice from Nphet, which we're going to explore with the industry, is how do we open it up in a way that is safe, safe for the people who are using it, safe for the staff?"
Mr Donnelly also moved to defend his relationship with chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan after complaints emerged from Government ministers that Nphet's new advice, projecting a spike in Covid-19 cases and deaths, had "blindsided" senior TDs.
"Dr Holohan and I have an ongoing conversation about the risk of Delta and indeed all the other variants, and the variant is moving very quickly," he said.
"The analysis last night (Monday) was the most severe that we've seen."
Mr Donnelly said the Government is not considering having an independent review of the Nphet modelling, despite a claim from Minister of State Ossian Smyth that there would be.
Mr Smyth now claims he was speaking in a personal capacity, though did not state this in the interview.
Mr Donnelly said advice and modelling from Nphet in the past had "served us well".
He added: "It has allowed us to act, a lot of the time it's allowed us to act before some of the European countries and to avoid some very bad things happening here."
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