I thank Deputy Pringle. I note the Deputy has some other questions to ask me later as well, which I will endeavour to answer. On the community health organisations, I do not have details in relation to specific risk assessments that were carried out but I will certainly check, get that detail and revert to Deputy Pringle today in respect of it. What I can tell the Deputy is that HIQA is playing an active role in carrying out risk assessments in community organisations, particularly in the nursing home settings and,…

I thank Deputy McNamara for the question. First, I take the point the Deputy makes in relation to young people but it is my duty to put on the record of this House that this is a virus which can be particularly severe for older people but to which young people are not immune. Indeed, yesterday in our country we had a 23 year old pass away from this condition. I know we all extend our sympathies to that individual's family. On the issue of visitor restrictions in nursing homes and the comments made by the Chief Medi…

I thank Deputy McNamara for bringing this issue to my attention and that of the House. I will raise it with the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport and his Department and ask that they link back in with the Deputy directly.

I thank the Deputy for those questions. I will try to deal with them sequentially. Regarding the mortality rate, the first point I would make is that, in a pandemic, one can often see its flattening lagging behind some of the other indicators. We are now beginning to see our ICU and hospital admissions and our growth rate beginning to go in the right way, but our mortality rate is not. That is, and should be, a cause of concern. It is fair to say that assessing comparisons of mortality statistics, as the Deputy ack…

The Deputy is kind of cutting across me.

I am not sure I am happy to have important issues raised that I do not respond to on the record of the House. I will be brief, but we cannot raise important questions and then not seek the answers for the public watching.

That is the purpose of this session. Deputy Stephen Donnelly asked an important question about the current R number. I do not want to take Deputy Butler's time. Professor Philip Nolan will provide an update this evening, but I would like to share with the House that we now have four different methods for estimating R. The epidemiological modelling group is suggesting that the R number is now between 0.7 and 1. It is encouraging news that it looks like the R number is now at or below 1. We had been saying it was in …

I thank Deputy Butler for her questions and the work she has done on this. The HSE informs me there are approximately 1,250 PPE deliveries to nursing homes and residential units every week and that the deliveries consist of 2,500 to 3,000 cartons and pallets, providing in excess of 1 million pieces of PPE per week to nursing homes and residential units. The Deputy is right to highlight an issue in relation to gowns. This is an area in which the HSE has highlighted a particular shortage. I am told by the CEO of the …

I thank the Deputy. I dealt with the question of the Chief Medical Officer's comments on restrictions from Deputy McNamara earlier but it is important to say that, when putting widespread national restrictions in place, it comes from the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, and from our clinicians. I stand by the judgment of the Chief Medical Officer. To be clear, he never said that individual nursing homes or individual hospitals could not put in restrictions but the idea that blanket restrictions are put…

I am sorry. On the issue of swabs, to be clear, I have asked the HSE and it is my understanding from the HSE that swabs do not expire and were not discarded. The backlog, as the Deputy knows, has been processed with the assistance of a German laboratory and additional laboratory capacity here. We are now seeing, on average, 1,200 swab requests per day from our GPs. That does not include our hospitals. Finally, in terms of contact tracing, I do not know the individual details. I am happy to take them from the Deputy…

I thank the Deputy for his question and for his public service in agreeing to go back to the front line, though we hope there is no surge. Before I address the Be On Call For Ireland initiative, I should point out that we are hiring people in other ways. More than 4,000 student nurses have now been given offers of paid employment as healthcare assistants, which will be a huge help to those on the front line. The Deputy rightly notes that around 70,000 people filled out forms as part of the Be On Call For Ireland in…

There is absolutely no doubt that this virus does not discriminate in terms of age, gender or where someone lives in our country. However, we know that it has a significant impact on people of a certain age. Very sadly, nine out of ten deaths in our country, some 91%, have been people over the age of 65. Roughly two thirds of deaths have been people with underlying health conditions. This is a cruel, dangerous and disgusting virus that is having a particularly devastating impact on older people, particularly older …

We support the WHO and I hope and believe there is a political consensus in this House in that regard. The Tánaiste, Deputy Coveney, today announced that we are quadrupling our normal annual financial contribution to the WHO this year to €9.5 million. That is right and proper. It is the very least we can do. It is a global pandemic. The WHO is doing incredible work. Our own countryman, Dr. Mike Ryan, has been to the fore in this work. I will not waste time in my response on what I think of the comments of President…

I will start with the Deputy's last question. I believe this has exposed a great inequality that exists in society. While I do not yet have data, I do not need them to tell me that it is harder to isolate in crowded accommodation. I do not need the data to tell me that vulnerable people living in congregated settings are more at risk or that it is more difficult to ask those who are managing to keep well to stay in the family home when it is cramped or crowded than it is to ask those of us who do not live in such c…

At the outset I just want to say that we will need to have a very serious conversation about the way we care for older people at the end of this pandemic. The Deputy is 100% correct that the current model is not fit for purpose. I would love to talk about that for longer; we do not have the time now but it is not fit for purpose. On the issue of transparency, Deputy Shortall has been constructive throughout this. She is right in that we need to continue to put out as much information as possible. I am making the po…

First, I will not make any partisan political comments. I used to be an awfully partisan politician and, really, this pandemic teaches one that everybody in this House in all parties and none is working their very best to save lives. That has been my experience of engagement with people here. I think we are very lucky to have Dr. Tony Holohan, a public health specialist, as the Chief Medical Officer in our country. When he answered the Deputy's question on 12 March, of course he answered it entirely correctly, as a…

I thank Dr. Berry. It is good to have his expert opinion as well. In relation to that scheme, it will open tomorrow. The CEO of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, had a conversation with the head of Nursing Homes Ireland this week anyway in that regard but it will open tomorrow. I thank Deputy Berry for bringing that up. In relation to St. Fintan's, Portlaoise, I can only begin to imagine the horrific tragedy and upset that people, including staff, are experiencing there. When one is dealing with long-term…

I do not know what the cost has been in relation to Aer Lingus, but I will check it out and revert to the Deputy. As he rightly said, its staff have done heroic work. I thank the crews, pilots and everyone else who have left their families and flown out there to do this. They have done the country a great service. I do not know the answer - I am being honest - but I will come back to Deputy Berry on it. On the issue of quality assurance, we do not have anyone on the ground in China. I am told it is very difficult t…

I thank the Deputy for his questions. We are operating in a time when we are trying to do a great deal simultaneously and at speed. Normally, many of the matters we are discussing - redeploying staff from one place to the other, for example - would take months of negotiation. We are now doing them day in, day out with the WHO's mantra in mind, that is, speed trumps perfection. It has to. This means that we will not get everything perfectly right and that we will have to retrofit, tweak and improve things as we go, …

I thank Deputies Connolly and Harkin. In response to Deputy Connolly, I have to put on the record of this House that whether they appeared in a briefing document or not, nursing homes certainly were a constant source of attention. I say that because HIQA, which regulates our nursing homes, is on the National Public Health Emergency Team so the nursing homes regulator has been sitting at the table and doing a good job. Many of the decisions we have made have rightly focused on older people, a proportion of whom resi…