Minister for Agriculture attends 81-person golf event in breach of health guidelines

Probably nothing to add to all this but just my 2c.

This entire pandemic has been difficult for myself and my wife. She's expecting our second child since late February (our first daughter is 2 years old) and pretty much bang on the initial lockdown announcement, she was crippled with sickness. Probably 4 or 5 days a week, she was confined to bed for most of the day, barely able to keep food or water down. I was still working at the time meaning that my work started at around 5am until my daughter woke between 7 and 8. I'd look after her until around lunchtime when she'd have a nap and I'd get another hours work done. Then I'd be looking after my daughter until bedtime (around 8pm) and then I'd get my final 3 or 4 hours of work done. Most nights I'd be working until between 11pm and midnight. If I was lucky, my wife was physically able to help out with minding our daughter for a bit during the day. But most days were as I described above from mid March until mid May when she was prescribed medication for her sickness and she was more able to help with childcare.

However, we were both still working from home so we were alternating doing 3 hours of work followed by 3 hours of minding our daughter for another 6 weeks or so until the creches reopened. That meant that we had little or no time to ourselves as one of us was usually working. We abided by the rules and didn't request any help from family during that time. However, we didn't complain. We were both still working. We were saving money from our daughter's creche being closed and from spending nothing on petrol. My job were also very understanding of our situation and even gave everyone a decent bonus for the work we were doing during the pandemic (which was appreciated). I understood that huge numbers of people were out of work and business owners were probably crippled with the stress of it all. Countless people lost loved ones (either from Covid or something else) and weren't able to go to their funeral. So while it was physically and mentally exhausting, and we had to cancel a number of mini holidays and days out during the year, we weren't complaining. We were, of course, "all in this together".

Things got easier when the creche reopened as we could both get our days work done and have time with each other and our daughter in the evening. We also heeded the call to holiday in Ireland and booked a few days away this month as a family while also booking a night in a hotel for just for me and my wife, knowing that this was probably our last chance for a night to ourselves for god knows how long (our second child is due in October).

But we live in north Kildare so we're obviously affected by the new restrictions. Our family holiday is next week and when it was mooted that the restrictions were being extended for Kildare, we were resigning ourselves to another disappointment in having to cancel it. However, that went completely out the window when this came to light. We were absolutely livid. The fcuking audacity of these cnuts. A minister, a TD, an EU commissioner, senators, former TDs and senators, a fcuking supreme court judge and others, thinking that these rules are just for the plebs. Hogan's story particularly grates with me given he's obviously been in and out of Kildare during these new restrictions.

So we decided, fcuk it, we've been through enough over the last 5 months and we're going on our holiday. And having chatted with a lot of our neighbours, they're of the same opinion. They've had it with the restrictions. No one has an issue with wearing a mask or socially distancing (from my own experience locally, people have been mostly abiding by these), but people in my vicinity are basically going where they please unless stopped by the Gardai. And this government only have themselves to blame. The selfish fcuking cnuts.