Why the delay on details regarding the opening of hotels, public houses, restaurants and other businesses? If the intention is to open businesses for Christmas, why all the secrecy? If people are having a turkey for Christmas dinner, they will already be making plans for this. People make plans one month or five weeks in advance because they have to order the turkey or whatever food they will have for Christmas. Why? It is because of supply and demand.

Are there any considerations for the looming issue regarding the supply chain of food for hotels, pubs and restaurants for Christmas? Hotels, pubs and restaurants have not ordered food or drink from their suppliers for months. They still do not know whether they are opening. They cannot simply turn a switch and say they are opening tomorrow and expect all the suppliers to have stock for them. In preparation for the proposed opening up of the economy, hotels have contacted their suppliers. Suppliers have told the hotels they are unsure about the reopening and cannot judge the stock. They cannot guarantee supply. The knock-on effect is that there is no guarantee of supply.

Children all over the world send their letters to Santa Claus in advance. Why? It gives Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and the elves due time so they can have the presents for the children on Christmas Day. Even the children around the world know this. Christmas is the busiest time of the year. People start planning to come home for Christmas up to 12 months in advance. We know that Christmas is different. What the Government has done to date has not worked. People will meet officially or unofficially. If the hotels, pubs and restaurants are open, we will have traceability and accountability.

The Government should work with what it has. There are 14,000 gardaí in Ireland, plus trainees. If the Government worked out the timetable, it would find out that at any one time we have a maximum of 6,000 gardaí on duty. That is approximately a ratio of people per garda of 900:1. If we work out the figures for hotels, pubs and restaurants, we quadruple traceability and accountability. We can work out the people who will not go to hotels and those who will not go to restaurants. It works out at between one and ten per person. We can then work out that we have 6,000 gardaí to go to where the problem lies at the moment, that is, where people are meeting for house parties. As the Taoiseach just mentioned, this is where the spike happens. The Government does not have the right number of people to quarantine what is in this country. The Taoiseach should use his head, common sense and a business approach and use what we have.

I accept the Deputy's overall point about preparation and the need to prepare.

Decisions will be made and announced by the Government in time for various sectors and actors to prepare in response to a Government announcement this week. I made it very clear five weeks ago that there would be a six-week application of level 5. I made it very clear in the first press conference that our objective was to arrive back at level 3 and see what we could do around that, depending on where the numbers were.

My focus has been to get the numbers down. That is Government's and society's focus and, as soon as one starts talking about relaxation two or three weeks out, that focus goes out the window. It is important we get the numbers down of a virus that is deadly, kills people, injures people long term and can do real damage. Sometimes in the debate, I feel that is getting lost. If I have to say it straight, I feel that key aspect of Covid is lost because of fatigue and the fact it is going on so long. That has to be our first motivation.

In terms of protection of livelihoods, if the virus gets to unmanageable levels, the economic damage will be far worse long term, as a consequential lockdown of a longer duration would be required. Ireland moved earlier than most European countries and is the better for having moved earlier with severe restrictions, while keeping aspects of our economy and social life open, in particular, schools.

It has been a tough sacrifice for people. I said earlier that the hospitality sector has borne the brunt of this because, in hospitality and tourism, people gather. Where people gather, the virus thrives, unfortunately. The Government has brought in unprecedented supports for sectors of the economy through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, the temporary wage subsidy scheme, TWSS, the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and the new Covid restriction support scheme, CRSS, for those who have been closed long term or had very low turnover long term. The numbers are extraordinary by any yardstick, in terms of the scale of that intervention.

We understand the difficulties people are going through because of Covid-19. It has had a damaging impact on people's lives and livelihoods and different sectors of the economy. The Deputy said what is happening has not worked. It has worked. We were at 1,200 cases per day and that has come way down. I want to get that lower and that is our challenge. The challenge for December and beyond will be making sure that through our individual and collective behaviour we do not do things that cause the virus to rise again. It can rise quickly, as we know. That impacts on hospitalisations, on people's health and, ultimately, on the economy.

I have talked to several hotels in County Limerick, from three star to five star: Deebert House Hotel, Kilmallock, Woodland House Hotel, Adare, The Mustard Seed, Ballingarry, Rathkeale House Hotel, Longcourt House Hotel, Newcastle West, and the Devon Inn Hotel, Templeglantine. All these hotels are waiting for the lockdown to lift, in the hope of salvaging Christmas. I spoke at length to the manager of Adare Manor, where 600 people are employed, who told me what the Taoiseach talked about earlier on, if he mentioned the hotels were opening. The Taoiseach had a channel to get to the hotels, restaurants and businesses and tell them that if the level 5 restrictions hold the numbers to a certain level, they would then be allowed to open. Then the hotels could gauge it themselves and prepare going forward. However, everything is a secret and the Government expects it can turn a switch and everything will be rosy and things will happen straight away. The Taoiseach had the mechanism within his Department to go to dialogue and give the information to the hoteliers and businesses and tell them if we reach certain numbers, we will go to level 3; if we reach different numbers, we will go to level 4. Then they could prepare for it. That is called giving people personal responsibility. Empower the people. People are not fools in Ireland. They want to keep themselves safe and the Taoiseach can then use what force is necessary for the minority who will not do it.

First of all, in terms of mechanisms and so on, we have made many public statements. People have tracked the status of the virus over the last number of weeks in terms of numbers coming down. When we reopened after the first lockdown - go right through the summer into September and October - restrictions were lifted and certain things happened, notwithstanding all the dialogue in the world. All of the Deputies know this in terms of certain locations, certain events. It is not a secret how spikes happened in certain locations and how the virus went up. There is no secrecy here. I made it very clear at the beginning that we were going to level 5 and would try to exit at level 3. We will be giving the sectors proper notice in advance of an easing of the restrictions and an exiting from level 5.