Mr. Jim Breslin:

I am very much committed to learning. As I said in my previous answer, I had to recognise that we would have liked to have had more PPE and more testing to make available. I absolutely recognise that. However, it is also fair for us to say that, objectively, everything possible within those constraints was done. The committee had the benefit of hearing from the WHO envoy last week, who said:

As far as I can tell from the analysis that I have done, Ireland moved pretty quickly on a number of issues particularly trying to get personal protective equipment, PPE, in its various forms, to the staff in nursing homes and restricting visitation in nursing homes, recognising that visitors were a primary way of bringing in the virus. Ireland, possibly, might have been one of the faster countries to introduce this. At the moment I am not thinking that there is something that Ireland has not done. I just think that one, we have got a very honest counting of numbers and two, as with every country, this has been quite a struggle but it seems that Ireland did pretty well.