Cabinet Committees
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I might take that offline with the Deputy and we will see if we can pursue it.
Deputy Quaide raised the issue of long Covid. I would be open to meeting the group again. I did meet with the group last June, as the Deputy said. He knows the narrative in terms of the position in that the Labour Court made a ruling in respect of this. I will again engage with the Ministers responsible. There are complexities around consequentials and so on like that. The healthcare service and the Department of public expenditure are saying that the public service sick leave scheme follows then, which is full pay for three months followed by half pay for three months. I get that the issue is the capacity of people with long Covid to participate in the workforce and the fact that it was, without question in my view, contracted on the hospital site. I do not dispute that. There can be a general argument as to where one contracts Covid, given the prevalence of Covid in society more generally. In the early part of Covid, there was no question that many healthcare professionals contracted it onsite in the hospitals. While one can never be totally definitive on that, it is a fairly plausible scenario that many did, particularly in the earlier phase when we had lockdowns and so on. Particular variants were more infectious than other variants. I will revisit this.
To Deputy O'Rourke, that is tomorrow and it is in respect of the issues. The services are going to be provided. My understanding is that they are available. Obviously there will be a lead-in. There was a list of issues that were raised in the discussions I had with the group. One of those was an apology in respect of the boarded-out and we are going to be faithful to the agreement that we reached. The survivors concerned had been notified in respect of this. We will proceed with that tomorrow.
To Deputy Peter "Chap" Cleere, the issue is that it is offsite. Is there a project in place to bring it back onsite or are we at a greenfield situation?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-24