In an off-the-cuff remark on Tuesday, the Tánaiste cancelled first communions and confirmations. The Chief Medical Officer, CMO, and NPHET have said they did not cancel them. This is no way to treat people. One cannot be surprised by everything. A few days before confirmations and first communions were due to happen in Ringsend, they were cancelled. That makes no sense whatsoever. These are a significant days for children and their parents. They are very expensive days and they are days for families. People can get married and celebrate that. Up to 50 people can gather in a church. People can go to the cinema. The children who were due to have their first communion or confirmation have been in class together every day for months, yet first communions and confirmations are banned in Ringsend. This has all gone too far and young people are paying the price. Will the Tánaiste see sense and allow communions and confirmations to go ahead?

I thank the Deputy. It was not an off-the-cuff remark, by the way; it was an on-the-record response to a question I was asked at a press conference. Those are the facts. What the CMO said yesterday is that NPHET did not recommend the cancellation of communions and confirmations because, in the view of NPHET, they were not supposed to be taking place anyway. We had hoped it would be possible for them to resume after 5 July but that is not the case. The advice from NPHET and the public health doctors and scientists is clear and is that people who are not vaccinated should not gather indoors. Unfortunately, that is what communions and confirmations inevitably involve, namely, people who are not vaccinated gathering indoors and, on some occasions, having family gatherings and parties thereafter and that results in clusters and the spread of Covid. That is the rationale behind the decision but I appreciate it is a big disappointment for a lot of people.