
EVERYONE living and working in Limerick can defeat Covid-19 by working together and following public health advice, Limerick Fine Gael Kieran OโDonnell has said.
Deputy Kieran OโDonnell said, โThe Governmentโs initiative – Resilience & Recovery 2020-2021: Plan for Living with Covid-19 โ will guide Irelandโs response to saving lives and managing the pandemic over the next seven months.
โWe can overcome this. We can beat Covid-19 but it will take hard work and a commitment from all. We have already shown this year how we can work together,โDeputy OโDonnell said.
The Governmentโs plan sets how all in Limerick can manage the disease in their communities over the coming months.
The plan sets out five levels of response, each with a number of measures designed to help lower Covid-19 transmission, and also sets out what is permitted at that moment in time. At the moment, Limerick is on level two.
โThe plan, if followed by all, aims to allow society and businesses to be able to operate as normally as possible, while continuing to suppress the virus.ย In particular, keeping schools, early learning and childcare services open are a top priority. We want to keep people in work and businesses operating, as we need a functioning economy to maintain our public services.
โEach level outlines what is permitted for social or family gatherings, work and public transport, bars, hotels and restaurants, exercise activities and religious services.
โOur country is soon entering the Winter months and we need to make every possible effort to make life easier for all.
โPlease obey the advice of the public health professionals. We are all working for the same goal here โ to defeat this pandemic and get our lives back to normal. It will take time but, working together, we can achieve this,โ Deputy Kieran OโDonnell concluded.
Cabinet also agreed this week to allocate a record โฌ600 million for the 2020 Winter Initiative, to ensure that our health service has the capacity and resources needed to deal with what is forecast to be a particularly challenging few months.
Fine Gael leader and Tรกnaiste Leo Varadkar said, โFrom the beginning, we knew we were in this together, now we need to know how we can get through this together aswell.
โUnfortunately, nothing is certain about Covid-19, it cares little for our plans, however we have reasons to be hopeful as a country. Weโre guided by all weโve learned about the virus in the past few months and we have confidence that we can do this because of what we have learned about each other.
โWeโve changed the way we live, the way we work, and todayโs plan sets out the steps to keep the virus under control, how we can anticipate and understand how to live our lives for the next six to nine months, and where setbacks occur, the steps that will be taken to reduce the risk of Covid-19 spreading out of control.
โThis is a plan to protect you, your family and friends, our community, our jobs and businesses,โ the Tรกnaiste said.