The Taoiseach has hurt many thousands of rural publicans, customers and people. What he has done, no other Fianna Fáil leader or Taoiseach in the past would have done to rural Ireland. What the Taoiseach has done is anti-village and anti-rural. Publicans and customers will have no Christmas. They are saying the Taoiseach does not care and that he has his job for another year or so and he is happy with that. The Taoiseach has belittled rural publicans and rural people. He does not trust them. Yet, there will certainly be plenty of unregulated drinking, as the Taoiseach and I know, and we will need good strong jeeps and vehicles to find them.

Talking about Roald Dahl and Mr. Fox and that kind of nonsense on the radio or television is no compensation to the people of rural Ireland. Where is the Taoiseach's evidence and scientific proof that pubs in rural Ireland were the cause or would be the cause of transmitting the virus? Where is that evidence? If the Taoiseach has it, he should bring it forward because he has not put it out yet.

The publicans have served the people well throughout the length and breadth of rural Ireland. It is obvious to them that the Taoiseach is protecting the pubs in Dublin. He is afraid to open the pubs in Dublin but he is pointing the finger at every rural pub throughout Ireland. Their businesses are lying in ruin thanks to the Taoiseach. For four years, he was attacking them by backing up Fine Gael and that party's cuts and destroying them in every which way. Now, the Taoiseach is at the helm and he is doing the same. The banks are down on their backs. Their mortgages have to be paid. They are earning not one crust and the Government is standing idly by. The Taoiseach has led to their destruction and in every town and village in rural Ireland it will never be forgotten what the Taoiseach has done to these pubs. I can assure the Taoiseach that if he thinks it will be forgotten, he is a very foolish man at this hour in his life.

Where I am living in Granagh, there is no pub open now within a 15-mile radius. The pubs in Granagh, Ballingarry, Croom, Feenagh, Ballyagran and Croagh are all closed.

What the Taoiseach is doing to all the people in my area, in a 15-mile radius, is shoving them into towns and cities if they wish to meet someone. We have small communities. We have small rural pubs where our people go to have a sociable drink. They are small monitored crowds. What the Taoiseach does not have in his statistics is how he is going to police the parties where people will congregate. The Taoiseach has no statistics for that. At least if someone goes to a pub there is written documentation of who has been there and who has not been there. The Taoiseach should stop nailing the lid on the coffin of rural Ireland.

Again, I have to say that I am not anti-rural, anti-village or anti-pub. There is nothing I would like better right now than a pint in some rural pub in an idyllic village in the west of Ireland - I can assure the Deputies of that.

Where is the Taoiseach's evidence?

That is not something I will be able to participate in for some time yet. That is not the fault of Government. It is not the fault of anyone. It is the fault of a virus, a global pandemic.

The ultimate objective of Government is to protect human lives and to protect those most vulnerable in our society. We have to make judgment calls. We have to make calls based on evidence. We have published the evidence. The evidence is available and we can look at it from August into September and right into October. Unfortunately, it is from the time when pubs were open. It is no fault on the publicans.

The Taoiseach has no evidence.

I have said repeatedly that I accept their goodwill in terms of their efforts to implement the guidelines. However, we need to consider the reality of what happened in many locations. One only has to look at the index going up in terms of the number of cases in certain areas after events combined with the opening of the wet pubs in my city. This is not only in rural Ireland.

It is also in cities. In Galway and Cork, for example, there was a significant increase at a given period as well as in rural areas. The evidence, unfortunately, is there for that.

The bottom line is that we could have taken a decision to open the pubs, but we would have done it clearly in the knowledge that we would have been contributing to an exponential rise in numbers fairly quickly. That is the issue, basically. Unfortunately, that is the issue. It is a genuine desire to try to save lives. People should not try to play politics to the degree that they are playing politics with it.

This the most anti-rural Government.

They are putting more work on the Garda.