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BARRY WALSH

Barry Walsh: Ireland should unlock the doors to our places of worship

Religious leaders must step up to plate and challenge this unconstitutional ban

The Sunday Times

With Covid infection rates rising sharply, most fair-minded people accept that life cannot return to normal until a critical mass of the Irish population has been vaccinated. What is difficult to accept, however, is the use of the pandemic to justify the trampling on legal and constitutional rights of Irish citizens by the government, with minimal oversight from the Oireachtas, and without any clear link between those measures and the fight against Covid.

The most extraordinary example of this is the continuing ban on public religious worship. Since St Stephen’s Day, all public religious services have again been outlawed — or,
to use the doublespeak of the government announcement, have been “moved online”. This reinstates a measure that was in force between October 21 and