Eamon Ryan has revealed the Government will consider reintroducing mandatory mask wearing if cases of Covid continue to spike.
The Greens chief was speaking after CMO Professor Breda Smyth and the HSE’s chief clinical officer Colm Henry both recommended donning masks again on public transport and in crowded places over Christmas, including when shopping and at mass. Concern is growing in medical circles the deadly virus is making a comeback –Covid cases are up 75% since the start of the month – and experts have advised people they should wear masks.
However, this has not been made mandatory by the Government yet. But Mr Ryan said the three leaders of Government, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Tanaiste Micheal Martin and himself, could reconvene within an hour of the Covid situation worsening and make drastic decisions on issues like mask wearing.
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A Government source last night told the Irish Mirror: “I can see it coming in, it would be sensible and would face no opposition from any of the ministers.” Mr Ryan said: “We’ll have to meet on that and obviously listen to the Chief Medical Officer’s advice.
“The mechanisms we established during Covid served us well. So we’ll have to reconvene, the Department of the Taoiseach will obviously lead on that, and my department, the Department of Transport will obviously feed in on that as well and provide our input.
“But first and foremost, we would have to convene and I’ll wait for the Taoiseach’s department to lead on that.” The minister was asked if this could happen this weekend and he added: “We’ve been in Christmases before, remember, the variant arrived just before Christmas and within half an hour I was on the phone to the UK minister saying we should shut down air travel.”
On Wednesday, Professor Smith told RTE’s News at One that the country is facing into the “eye of a respiratory virus storm.” She added: “Over Christmas we will see large scale social mixing, we will also see mass transit of people on public transport going from East to West, or West to East, or North to South, be it on whatever mode of public transport.
“And one thing we all can do to protect the vulnerable on the public transport, but also ourselves, is by wearing a mask.” It comes as the HSE confirmed it has established a new NPHET style group to deal with the rising virus cases. The National Crisis Management Team will oversee the health service’s response to the surge in winter virus infections.
The group has already met twice this week, and will continue to do so over the Christmas period.
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