Following our earlier session, when the House discussed amendments to the mandatory hotel quarantine provisions of the Health Act 1947, I am now proposing to extend the provisions of the Health (Amendment) Act 2021 with regard to mandatory hotel quarantine to 31 October. The Act contains a sunset clause in section 9. Unless it is extended by resolution passed by each House of the Oireachtas before 31 July, it will lapse on that date. The Act allows for extensions of up to a maximum of three months. It has already b…

I will come back on some of those medical exemptions. The regulation, which is set out and available online, essentially states that urgent critical care is covered. If there are other areas Senator Warfield wants to talk to me about afterwards, I am more than happy to give him a view. The Senator asked how the states are designated. Global analysis is carried out on a rolling basis of states all over the world. Two main criteria are used. One is variants of concern and whether they are detected. Many countries in …

I am pleased to introduce the CervicalCheck Tribunal (Amendment) Bill 2021 to Seanad Éireann. The purpose of this amendment to the CervicalCheck Tribunal Act 2019 is to extend the period for receipt of claims by the CervicalCheck Tribunal. The current time limits for making a claim to the tribunal are set out in section 12(1) of the 2019 Act. The current relevant time limit for all eligible women is nine months from the date of establishment, which is 26 July 2021. This Bill proposes extending the final date for re…

On a point of order, the Senator is talking about the Chief Medical Officer, who reports to me. She is making a lot of allegations under privilege.

I am not as familiar with the rules of the Seanad but in the Dáil I do not believe this contribution would be in order.

I thank everyone for their contributions. I have a wrap-up speech but I am not going use it. Instead, I will try to respond to the questions and points raised because this has been a useful debate. I echo the sentiments expressed by Senators from across the Chamber that we have to get women's healthcare right. We have never got women's healthcare right. I have no doubt that if men had babies, Holles Street would look like the deck of the Starship Enterprise or the Blackrock Clinic or some other gorgeous place. Ther…

That advice, as far as I can see, was partly because of this issue of recurrence. All I can say is that I wanted to do it. Every Member of the Cabinet and the Oireachtas wanted to do it. If it could have been done, we would have done it. There were numerous conversations at the Cabinet about this. Every time we brought it back, my Cabinet colleagues and I asked whether we could go further and do more. We pushed and pushed for this. It has never been out of a lack of willingness or due to not listening. We have list…

I am okay, Acting Chairman. I believe I got the opportunity.

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I will be sharing time with the Tánaiste. I am pleased to address the House on the Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2021, which provides for the reopening of indoor hospitality under certain conditions and makes minor amendments to mandatory hotel quarantine. The Bill will give effect to the Government's decision to enable access to relevant indoor premises for fully vaccinated persons and persons who are immune from Covid-19 by virtue of the fact that they have rec…

I thank colleagues for their contributions today. It is clear the matters provided for in the Bill are of great interest to Members across the House. Many issues have been raised during the debate with a range of views and insights shared. There are Members of the House who believe restrictions should be relaxed more quickly and that we should open up more quickly. There are those who believe the provisions here are a safe way forward for reopening the sector. There are those who believe we should keep the entire s…

It is not the way that any of us would like to conduct business.

It is solely in response to a rapidly moving variant that we have to bring in measures to keep people safe.

I request the Ceann Comhairle to direct the Clerk, in accordance with Standing Order 196, to make the following minor correction to the text of the Bill: On page 18, line 43, replace the words "Companies Acts" with "Companies Act 2014".

I cannot really respond in less than 60 seconds. There has been a lot of very legitimate debate-----

I have taken notes on what everyone has said but I cannot respond in less than 60 seconds.

I genuinely wanted to respond to Deputy Boyd Barrett in particular because these are his amendments, which were very legitimately tabled. It is my hope that this will be a non-issue before the first period of three months is up. I would genuinely like to engage with Deputy Boyd Barrett on the debate because the position he has outlined is a legitimate one. I take a different position but at least the Deputy has said that in order for there to be no difference, we should just keep the entire sector closed until it i…

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to update the House on my Department's processing of parliamentary questions since the cyberattack on 13 May. Parliamentary questions are a core part of how democratically-elected representatives seek information from Ministers on behalf of the people of Ireland. The cyberattack caused severe disruption to my Department's parliamentary question process and I fully understand that this situation has been very frustrating for Deputies. I wish to assure colleagues that we ar…

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. I acknowledge that our hospital system is facing challenges and has been close to full capacity in recent weeks. It is very important to acknowledge this has caused distress for patients, their families, and of course for our frontline healthcare workers who are working in very challenging conditions. Attendances at emergency departments, EDs, have increased steadily since the beginning of the year and were almost back to 2019 levels, for the same time that …

I thank the Deputy. I look forward to seeing the document. Nobody has a monopoly on the solutions to this so I very much look forward to seeing the proposals. To respond directly to the Deputy's question, through the winter plan and this year so far, an additional 834 acute beds have been delivered, with another 229 expected this year. In addition, 73 sub-acute beds have been added with 40 more planned for this year. There has also been substantial funding to increase home support hours, as the Deputy will be aware…

I must say I agree with much of what the Deputy has just said. On building up the acute capacity, it is the biggest expansion in a single year ever to have been attempted, as far as I am aware, and the reports back from the HSE are very positive. On the Deputy's point, there are areas where the planned expansion is not on target, largely because of Covid and the cyberattack, and obviously it has been a very difficult year. However, specifically on what we are talking about, there is really good progress and they ar…