Haircuts and reopening
Senator McGahon joked about getting his first haircut in months and welcomed the reopening of barbers. The exchange stayed lighthearted, with interjections from colleagues, and focused on the general positivity of reopening.
Today is a great day with the positivity in the air. I got my hair cut at 8 a.m.. I was first in the queue. Literally and figuratively it is a weight off my shoulders. The best thing about it is that the number of people-----
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I want to give no offence to the four Members beside me over here who may not need haircuts as quickly as that, with all due respects to them. Senator Byrne will be in the queue as will the Cathaoirleach. I have just lost so many potential Senate votes now if I ever need to run again. My point is about the positivity in the air. It was great for the two barbers being able to come back in this morning. The last time that they were working was on 24 December. People were knocking on the window wishing them good luck and they are delighted to be there with that sense of positivity that is finally here, which is great to see.
From today, we are allowing public transport capacity to increase to 50%. The Government said that it still wants people working from home until September at the earliest. I return to one of the first issues I raised in this House last year, which is the concept of a three-day week taxsaver certificate. It is up to National Transport Authority, NTA, to introduce this. We are going to see people moving back to offices, whether this is for two or three days a week. We need the Minister or the Government to put pressure now on the NTA to get this issue solved now. We are a year into this and people are going back to work now and it is not acceptable that we still have the same answer, which is that the system is being looked at to figure out ways to implement it. I would appreciate if we could have a discussion about that at some stage in the future.