When the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives goes in­to ses­sion this af­ter­noon at 1:30 for its 23rd Sit­ting, it will be do­ing so un­der stricter mea­sures to help re­duce the spread of COVID-19 among staff and Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, alike.

In a re­cent news re­lease, the Par­lia­ment Sec­re­tari­at an­nounced sev­er­al so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures in this re­gard.

New seat­ing arrange­ments have been put in place for Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.  Some Mem­bers will be seat­ed in the Cham­bers while oth­ers will be seat­ed in meet­ing rooms through­out the Par­lia­men­tary Com­plex with ac­cess to tele­vi­sion screens to view the pro­ceed­ings. If a vote is called for, those Mem­bers not seat­ed in the Cham­ber will be al­lowed a few min­utes to get to the Cham­ber where they will cast their vote then re­turn to their meet­ing rooms.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic will not be grant­ed ac­cess to the Par­lia­men­tary precincts dur­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 cri­sis. In­stead, cit­i­zens are ad­vised to view the sit­tings and com­mit­tee meet­ings on the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel, Par­lia­ment Ra­dio 105.5 FM or via the Par­lia­ment’s YouTube Chan­nel, Par­lView.

In ad­di­tion, an­oth­er so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sure be­ing im­ple­ment­ed is that the num­ber of me­dia per­son­nel al­lowed in the Me­dia Gal­leries has been lim­it­ed to five. Me­dia per­son­nel are now re­quired to wear a face mask at all times while at the Par­lia­men­tary Com­plex—face masks which must be of a dark colour to avoid caus­ing dis­trac­tions.

Dur­ing this af­ter­noon’s Par­lia­men­tary Ses­sion, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young MP, will move the sec­ond read­ing of The Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing) (Amend­ment) Bill, 2020.

Al­so, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert MP, is ex­pect­ed to lay be­fore Par­lia­ment, the Val­ue Added Tax (Bond-Pay­ment Re­fund) Reg­u­la­tions, 2020, which lays the ground­work for VAT re­funds to be paid to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.