David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am taking time from Deputy Pearse Doherty so I will have ten minutes. I welcome our witnesses and commend them on the work they are doing, and for the collaborative effort of the CIF, the trade union movement, the HSA and others to get the protocols in place in the first instance. That needs to be noted and the people involved should be commended on it.

We all accept that there is a desire from sections of society to go back to work and have restrictions eased. Equally, there is a balance to be struck because people want to be made safe and protected. My questions are about process and making sure that we have a plan in place to protect workers. Obviously, we want the economy to reopen but it has to be done in a safe way.

My first questions are for Dr. McGuinness. I presume she would accept that a plan needs to be put in place. Protocols can exist but will be irrelevant if there are not the resources and capacity to enforce them, so enforcement is key. Any plan needs to be resourced from human and financial perspectives. On the human side of it, Dr. McGuinness said that 67 field inspectors have been assigned to deal with this protocol. I presume that is across a whole layer of businesses and not just construction as the economy starts to reopen.

Ms King said that 67 inspectors is totally inadequate and I agree. We spoke on the phone about this earlier in the week. Dr. McGuinness said that additional resources may be made available, although those may not be financial resources. Is she talking about assigning more inspectors or people from different organisations being assigned to the HSA? Are those 67 inspectors adequate? When, and how, will more become available? What is the regional breakdown for those inspectors? Is it done centrally or broken down regionally?