Independent TD Mattie McGrath has defended comments he made comparing the proposed vaccine pass laws to Nazi Germany.
The leader of the Dáil Rural Independent Group said on Monday that Covid certificates for indoor dining were akin to something from 1930s Nazi Germany.
Mr McGrath has been a vocal opponent of plans to open indoor hospitality only for those who have been vaccinated against Cvoid-19 or who have recovered from the virus.
He said "Is that where we've come to now, back to 1933 in Germany, we'll be all tagged in yellow with the mark of the beast on us, is that where we're going?" he said.
"I'm surprised at ye."
But clarifying the situation on Monday evening, Deputy McGrath claimed that he did not draw a specific equivalence between the current Irish situation and the systemic murder of the Jewish population in the Holocaust..
He said: “I will not be lectured to by this Taoiseach, any member of his government or indeed any member of this Dáil when they continue to insist that I am engaged in false equivalences on this matter. I have never used the word ‘holocaust’ despite the misleading assertions of the Taoiseach and others.
"Neither have I argued against vaccination. What I have argued against is enforced or coercive vaccination as indeed the EU Parliament has and that is an entirely different matter.
"Yes I have described the governments railroading of draconian, discriminatory and profoundly unethical legislation on this issue as reminiscent of the early Nazi era, however I was using the term as a way to describe a certain kind of political environment where fundamental constitutional and legal principles are eroded and where a system of enforced segregation is imposed on people under a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
"In this sense it should be clear to all that what is happening this week is a travesty of the democratic process. The entire political opposition and anyone with their eyes open at all can see that this is the case."
Deputy McGrath defended his comments, saying they were necessary, even if "stark"
"I accept that this is stark language, but sometimes stark language is necessary to alert people to the scale and depth of the discrimination that this government is attempting to legitimise.
"My fundamental point is this; there are clear and egregious civil liberty violations embedded into the vaccine pass system that is being proposed and I will not shirk from calling that out just because my remarks are being amplified and distorted in a deeply cynical fashion,” concluded Deputy McGrath.
