I will correspond with Deputy Harkin in detail. However, while I am conscious of the time, she has raised such an important issue that I will give a brief reply now. The way the Deputy has outlined the issue is exactly how this should be viewed. This is a starting point to get these services back up and running. These people and their families have been left largely on their own due to this pandemic and we need to get the services back up and running. Not all day centres are the same, nor are all service users the …

I very much welcome this opportunity once again to update this House on the Covid-19 disease and our national response to it. First and foremost, I wish to express my sympathy to the families and friends of those who have been lost to this disease since I was last in this House. Our thoughts are with each and every one of them at this very difficult time. Last Friday, we decided as a Government that we could proceed with phase 2 of our roadmap and we could also bring in some additional measures. As always, our deci…

I thank the Deputy. As he knows, the four national screening programmes - BreastCheck, CervicalCheck, BowelScreen and Diabetic RetinaScreen - were paused in March in line with public health advice. Such programmes were paused in many countries around the world, including Northern Ireland on this island, as well. This was done to protect patients and staff. It is important to say people who were in the system at the time of the pause have continued to be treated. With BreastCheck, for example, women who have been sc…

I thank the Deputy. In the interests of time I will revert to him on the issue of respite in writing but I take the point that carers are exhausted. My colleague, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy McHugh, is working with the HSE specifically in respect of a summer programme that I hope will see some day respite, in the first instance, for children. I will come back to the Deputy with a more detailed note on that. While I acknowledge the work Deputy Browne has been doing in the whole area of mental healt…

I thank Deputy Butler for raising the issue of nursing homes, as she does on a regular basis. I, too, listened to Dr. Nabarro today and he rightly highlighted the challenges and tragedies in respect of the passing of people in nursing homes from Covid-19. He also said that Ireland has a very honest accounting of the numbers, which I do not think many countries can say when it comes to care homes. He also said that we have the widest circle of inclusion of all of the countries he had studied. Not to take away from t…

I will be brief on this issue, although it is really important. I agree with the Deputy. I want this unit to remain open. I am meeting tomorrow with midwives from Cavan General Hospital and the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO. As the Deputy rightly said, the national maternity strategy is very clear in this regard. Women need more choice with regard to birth and pregnancy. Midwife and community-led schemes are very important and fundamental parts of the national maternity strategy. My Department was no…

I fully agree with the Deputy. We need such a public awareness campaign. I take the implicit and fair criticism that the messaging in this regard has been confused. This is possibly because so many different people and experts have an opinion on the matter. It is the clear view of our public health experts, of NPHET and of Government that one should wear non-medical face coverings when one is on public transport, when in indoor public areas including retail outlets, when visiting the homes of those who are cocoonin…

I join the Deputy in expressing my appreciation to all family carers. Family carers have had to do even more caring during the pandemic. Services were closed for public health reasons and to keep their loved ones safe, but a huge burden comes with that. I share the Deputy's view that we must do more for family carers. If this Dáil lasts four or five more years, God willing, one of the interesting things that whoever is involved in programme for Government talks should consider is the carer's guarantee and some of t…

First, I cannot be so arrogant as to presume that I will be a part of the next Government, but I accept the broader point the Deputy makes on the need to do healthcare differently. The advice I would give to the Oireachtas, whoever is Minister for Health and whoever is in government is that we must do two things. We will have to put the capacity in place, and that means beds and staff. The second thing that Covid-19 will make us do is what we should have been doing anyway, which is new models of care. That involves…

I will start with Deputy Tully's questions. I thank Naomi. In the interests of time, I think the Deputy will have heard my comments in the House earlier but I will revert to Naomi directly too. The Deputy is dead right that services have to be developed in line with policy. This House and the Government set policy. The policy is that there should be more MLUs in Ireland, not fewer. The people responsible for the delivery of the health services need to follow the policy. There was no discussion about the closure of …

I thank Deputy Burke for his compliments to the officials in my Department, the HSE and our incredible front-line staff. It is very kind of him. People have been working extraordinarily hard. He raised the important issue of the testing strategy for hospitals, that is, who is to be tested, the criteria for being tested and what we do about the testing of staff and patients. Those are key questions. I understand the clinical adviser for acute hospitals in the HSE has drafted a paper on this. It was first discussed b…

I assure the Deputy that I will appreciate my barber all the more after this. The Ceann Comhairle was possibly too generous to Members of this House when he described everyone as very well kept. I was certainly not in the Chamber at the time. I know this is a serious issue, especially for the people for whom this sector provides a livelihood. This industry employs many people in towns, villages and cities across the country. As with every other industry, it wants certainty about when it will be possible to get back…

Ironically, it is my Fine Gael colleagues who are throwing the most challenging questions at me today, between barbers and social dancing. I will have to revert to Deputy Feighan and his constituent on that matter. Under phase 2 of the plan, people are able to socialise again, while being asked to keep a distance. It is safe to dance as long as it is possible to stay 2 m away from the other person.

Deputy Higgins is entirely right that the flow of information and data is our friend and ally in this pandemic. We have to keep bringing people with us and explain why we are asking them to make such serious changes in their lives and bear with serious restrictions. The Deputy is also right that we are now seeing several counties that have not had a case in several days. I think County Sligo leads the league table and has been without new cases for 22 days, from the information I saw yesterday. I think County Kerry…

I thank the Deputy for his kind words. There are a couple of important issues. With regard to domestic and gender-based violence, I thank the organisations that have been doing incredible work alongside An Garda Síochána. I visited the National Ambulance Service some weeks ago at the height of this pandemic and they were experiencing an increase in calls related to domestic violence. For many of us, our home is a place of safety and well-being. For some people, sadly, when they close their own door it is anything b…

Truthfully, I do not have that information but I get what the Deputy is saying and I have a way of getting the information for him. I submit a report to the Government about phasing every three weeks and I will see what I can share with the Deputy on that matter in writing. I will also share it with the House. We do look at the different categories. So far as secondary mortality and morbidity are concerned, and the Deputy will agree with me on this, those are very hard at this stage to detect with any degree of cer…

Whoever is the Opposition and whoever is the Government - it is a fluid situation at the moment - there should be a regular meeting with the HSE. I would not like to see that dropped. I thought it was quite a useful engagement and would support ensuring that it happens again. What I am saying to the Deputy is that we already know there are impacts in terms of secondary morbidity and secondary mortality from Covid. We just talked about it in respect of the potential risks of domestic violence. We have talked about i…

The HSE is developing what it calls a framework document called Service Continuity in a Covid Environment: A Strategic Framework for Delivery. It exists. It has done that. It is right and proper, though, that it interact with my Department on this from a policy perspective, making sure it is aligned with policy and with the service plan. It may require us to amend the service plan because levels that the HSE legally committed to delivering in terms of services may not now be deliverable. There is a lot of work alre…

That is it. I understand the final version is going to the board of the HSE on Wednesday. As the Deputy reminded me from day one, it is the HSE's plan to publish. I make the point that non-Covid care has resumed in many areas. I am not going to read out a long list and eat into the Deputy's time. That can be seen in the fact that there are far fewer vacant beds in our health service this week than there were last week.

The capital plan will fall to the new Government. It will have to make some big key decisions on the capital plan. There is only so much we can do in this interregnum. We have pushed the boat out on A Vision for Change because it was important but at some point the new Government must take over. Of course there will have to be revisions to capital plans. I thank the Deputy for his advocacy on the flu vaccine. He was very effective on this and we will see where it brings us. I will ask the HSE to ensure that it is a…