Greens leader Eamon Ryan has spoken out about the shock of being sent into Covid isolation after his colleague Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue was confirmed positive.
Mr Ryan sent his best wishes to Mr McConalogue and said the urgent call to self-isolate brought home “the reality” facing thousands of families who get bad Covid news every day.
The Minister for Transport also revealed how he received the bad news just before he was due to host a roundtable Christmas interview with political correspondents.
The Irish Mirror actually met Mr Ryan on the stairs of the Dáil just before noon, on the way to the interview that was about to be cancelled and we chatted briefly about the weather.
Mr Ryan couldn’t hang around as he was rushing out of Leinster House and heading home where the press conference took place online instead.
Mr Ryan said he will follow all HSE advice on restricting his movements.
And he said he hopes all his colleagues are safe and well.
He said: “I absolutely wish Charlie well and a safe and speedy recovery from the virus, the same to all my colleagues and anyone else.
“There’s a thousand families in this country waking up this morning from those figures yesterday to that reality.
“My thoughts and well wishes goes out to every one of those families.
“And that’s why we have to act in difficult circumstances the way we do."
Mr Ryan spoke about the Cabinet meeting Mr Conalogue attended with him on Tuesday morning.
He said: “The Cabinet meeting - just to maybe give a sense of the details - the logistics of it.
“It’s held - not in the ordinary Cabinet room, not even in Government Buildings - to provide a safe environment it’s held in Dublin Castle.
“In ordinary times conferences happen in that... conference centre.
“And in that conference centre you get down to the bottom of the stairs, the room and there’s the big main conference room.
“So that’s where cabinet’s held.
“And it’s more than two metres distancing.
"I’d say it’s almost three or four metres because it’s such a big room and it’s a very round table and Cabinet meetings actually while I think there was a lot of coverage that it was a very lengthy Cabinet meeting - my recollection yesterday it wasn’t that... it was about a two hour meeting - if that - probably just a bit less than that.
“We have tried wherever possible in Government Buildings or other meetings to try and keep them to two hours on health advice.
“It was there or thereabouts yesterday.”
He also revealed the Government Ministers' mask-wearing habits.
“So, ordinarily people don’t wear masks but people sometimes do and certainly coming in and out of the room or any other engagements people do wear masks.
“But because in speaking people tend to take off their masks, that tends to be the approach.”
