Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Good morning everyone and I thank the witnesses for their presentations. Certainly, when I was doing some research on this issue I found it very frustrating because so little official data is available from the hospitals providing the clinics or from the HSE itself. I can only imagine how much more frustrating it must be for the witnesses. Last month, I tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister, which was referred to the HSE, asking about data related to a whole lot of aspects of the operation of the clinics and numbers and I am waiting on all of that. The reply I received was:

I wish to advise we have contacted the hospitals providing long Covid and post-acute Covid clinics in relation to the information which you are seeking. Unfortunately, we have been advised by the hospitals that this patient-level data is not collected and measured.

We all know that what gets measured gets managed. That is at the root of a lot of the problems with the official approach to addressing the issue of long Covid, that is, that very little data is available to us. The HSE and the hospitals concerned do not seem to be particularly interested in that and the committee will raise that issue with them when they come in. From our guests' perspective, what are the key things on which we need to have figures and data to give us a better handle on this issue?