Urgent new restrictions have been announced for Leinster House amid growing concern about Covid-19.
Among them are new safety measures for the Dail bar, which has become the first hospitality venue in Ireland to reintroduce rules around visitor numbers and face coverings.
A letter sent to TDs and Senators today - seen by the Irish Mirror - details the major changes which have been introduced until the Easter break to “protect each other from the highly transmissible airborne variant”.
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It says the measures have been put in place “to prove a safe workplace for everyone in the Parliamentary Community”.
The letter explains: “With the increase in positive Covid-19 cases across society (including in the Houses of the Oireachtas) we are taking additional measures until the Easter recess to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infection in the Leinster House complex and ensure that we can continue to deliver essential services to the Houses of the Oireachtas.”
Among the measures are restrictions on visitor numbers in the Dail bar and a requirement to wear a face mask.
It says: “Group numbers at events in the AV room, Members Restaurant and Bar are restricted to 20 with mask wearing requirement for all participants at events. All visitors should be advised of our Covid-19 preventative measures.”
This makes the Dail bar the first in Ireland to reimpose Covid rules on face masks and visitor numbers.
Further face mask advice has been issued for Leinster House, with people asked to resume wearing one indoors.
“We strongly advise and request everyone to resume wearing a mask in Leinster House to protect each other from the highly transmissible airborne variant. This includes the Seanad Chamber and Committee rooms,” the letter explains.
Anyone visiting Leinster House has also been advised to “remain vigilant” and to “not come onsite” if they are feeling unwell.
The new Leinster House Covid rules comes just days after Leo Varadkar doubled-down on the Government’s pledge not to reintroduce Covid restrictions.
The Tanaiste said that they had no intention of “turning on and turning off restrictions” whenever new waves of the virus came along.
He said: “As things stand we are experiencing a second wave of Omicron, the Omicron-plus variant, which as you know is more virulent than the original variant strain and is driven by the fact that these things do come in waves and there has been a reduction in restrictions in the last couple of weeks, people are mixing more.
“So, you know, it isn’t a surprise that we’re seeing an increase in infections.
“What is reassuring is that half of the people who are in hospital with Covid would be in hospital anyway, they’re incidental.
“We aren’t seeing the kind of numbers in ICU we would have been seeing a few months ago and thankfully the number of deaths is very low.
“So we have to keep monitoring the situation, we certainly don’t want to end up in the situation where we have to reimpose restrictions.
“This virus isn’t going to go away, we’re going to have more waves over the next couple of months, couple of years and we don’t want to be turning on and off restrictions.
“We do need to live with this virus.
“And the solution in my view is vaccination, it’s heeding the advice to stay at home if you have symptoms, getting a test if you do and then observing the common sense advice that we’ve asked people to do.”
Friday saw 19,866 new Covid cases confirmed - made up of 9,324 PCR results and 10,542 antigen results.
1,466 people are in hospital with Covid, of which 55 are in ICU.
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