The Minister was speaking during a debate on the Health Amendment Bill, which restricts access to indoor dining to those who have been fully vaccinated, or recovered from Covid-19, plus staff and children under 18.

Independent NUI Senator, Ronan Mullen said there is a fundamental injustice underpinning the Bill. “The notion of intergenerational solidarity, so extensively promoted by the Government when it suits, has been abandoned. A commitment made and restated by the Tánaiste as recently as four weeks ago that there would be no discrimination between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated has been cynically abandoned. All it took was a wave of the magic wand by NPHET for a set of apocalyptic projections to be accepted by the Cabinet virtually without question”, he added.

In the Minister’s summation at the end of the debate he said: “The only Senator who I will refer to directly is Senator Mullen. I will not take any lectures from Senator Mullen, who campaigned against gay marriage. He can keep his lectures on solidarity to himself”.

In a response on twitter, Senator Mullen said he “didn’t preside over a ‘health’ régime that caused the death of a little child in Holles Street, and fail to investigate and fail to apologise. I think my record on solidarity bears comparison with that of @DonnellyStephen”.