If the Deputy does not mind, what I will do is ask for a briefing on why it may or may not be possible to do so. It may be that there are issues of commercial sensitivity involved but I will ask the question.

I thank all of the Deputies. It has been a long, detailed and good session and we have touched on many of the issues that have been raised. We have discussed our extraordinary healthcare professionals on the clinical side, the administrative side and the support side in the HSE, the Department and right across the system. There has been wide and deep recognition of the role everybody has played. I understand that the Vote is being accepted and if that is the case, I want to thank the House for that and for the reco…

I am sharing time with Deputies Butler, Brendan Smith and Crowe. This session concerns emergency bed capacity and, for me, how we can avoid an escalating trolley crisis every year. Before Covid-19 arrived, many of us were debating the trolley crisis in the Chamber. More than 100,000 people were on trolleys last year, 13,000 of whom were on trolleys for more than 24 hours. Elderly men and women were on trolleys for days on end, and we were all personally very affected, upset and frustrated by that. In preparation fo…

I will allow the Minister to respond.

I am. I am going to take the first five minutes for an exchange with the Minister. Last week, we discussed the ongoing closure of the screening programmes. The Minister just referred to them again. He said at the time that screening would recommence as soon as possible. I believe those are the words the National Screening Service gave to him. Given that general practitioners can now take smear tests, "as soon as possible" would mean that CervicalCheck screening should restart now, but that is not what is happening.…

I will take the first five minutes.

The remaining speakers will take two and a half minutes each.

Everybody would prefer to have his or her own slot, if he or she could.

We might rely on your laser-like focus to make sure everybody gets his or her time.

I want to ask the Minister about two different areas. One is the screening services, and I thank him for the update on that, and the second is the contract with private hospitals. The screening services obviously had to be closed down. We screen approximately 3,000 women and men a day. Closing them for three months has meant that 170,000 screenings, or thereabouts, have not happened. We all back the screening services. We know early detection saves lives, therefore, unfortunately delayed detection can cost lives. M…

I will share time and will take the first five minutes. Yesterday, hundreds of pages of correspondence between Nursing Homes Ireland and the State were released. They paint a very dark picture of staff having to use painter's overalls and goggles from local schools to protect themselves; of four-week delays in testing; and of no voice on NPHET or even on the subgroup looking at nursing homes. The Minister said to me recently that HIQA was its voice. I put that to HIQA yesterday at the Special Committee on Covid-19 …

We heard from health officials on Tuesday that we could be dealing with Covid for years to come. In a Covid world, this is going to have a dramatic impact on our healthcare system and reduce the number of patients who can be seen. As the Secretary General said, it will cost more and take longer to do less. Hospital bed occupancy will drop from near 100% to 80%, which is the equivalent of losing about 2,000 public beds. The plan was to go from 10,000 beds to 12,600 over five years under Sláintecare. Instead, we are …

I would like to start by adding my voice and expressing my sympathies and condolences to the friends and families of the many women and men who have lost their lives since we stood here last Thursday. I would like to talk to the Minister about the private hospitals. Taking over the private hospitals in March to guard against a surge was the right thing to do. It was a big, bold move and it was the right thing to do. Health officials agree that that capacity is no longer needed for the surge, and that only 20% of it…

With the Ceann Comhairle's permission, I will take the first six minutes with the Minister, after which my colleagues would like a back-and-forth with him, if they may.

I, too, start by expressing my deepest condolences to the friends and families of the many women and men who have tragically lost their lives since we met here last Thursday. On that point, I wish to talk to the Minister about cancer services. The HSE told us yesterday that GP referrals to the rapid access clinics for patients with suspected cancers have fallen by more than half since Covid-19 arrived. This means that many people with cancers will have those cancers missed, at least in the short term, and we know t…

I thank the Minister. It is good that the national cancer control programme is doing that and we heard its representatives on the radio this morning. I am proposing something far more ambitious because considerable resources, professionalism, talent and money have been brought to the public communications around Covid-19. There are advertisements in every newspaper, on every radio programme and on the television, and we are all out talking about it. Every door has a big yellow sign on it referring to Covid-19. That…

I appreciate the Minister's indication that he is looking into the possibility of a major campaign. Oncologists are frustrated. Everybody understands why the blockages have appeared in the system as they have, but there appears to be a disconnect between the public narrative that cancer care services are operating as normal and what the oncologists and, more importantly, their patients are experiencing. There are a lot of delays. It would be fantastic if the Minister could look into that. On the turnaround time for…

I will share time. I will take the first five minutes. Maybe the Minister and I could go back and forth, with the Ceann Comhairle's permission. I would like to start by expressing my sympathies as well with the friends and families of the many women and men who have now died. This has come at an extraordinary cost so far. It is a very difficult time for anyone who is trying to mourn a loved one or a lost friend. I would also like to acknowledge that without the extraordinary work of our healthcare professionals and…

Deputy Browne and I would prefer to split the time and take five minutes each for questions. My first question will probably take a bit longer than one minute but I will lay it out in a way that allows the Minister to respond.

Big efforts have been made to get our hospitals ready for a surge, which have been successful. Efforts were also made to ensure that surge was as small as possible, which have also been successful. The same efforts were not put into getting the nursing homes ready for Covid-19. As we sit here today, seven in every ten Covid-19 fatalities in Ireland are from a nursing home or community care home. Nursing homes are desperately short of staff and personal protective equipment. A nurse told me earlier this week: "Many …