Dr. Peadar Gilligan:

Again, absolutely. I acknowledge there remains huge frustration in the system when people feel that the level of care they would wish to offer they cannot offer because of the constraints of the system. The entire system needs to work towards facilitating the doctor, nurse or healthcare professional in delivering the care he or she wishes to deliver. We have not been in that space, but what Covid has shown us is that when the system pulls together it can achieve amazing things regarding the delivery of safer care. Some 8,000 healthcare professionals in Ireland contracted Covid in the course of the delivery of care to patients, which is a significant number of people who became unwell as a result of the work they do. We have too many multi-bed wards in the hospital system still. We need to move towards more isolation facilities. We have too few critical care beds. We need more of those as well. I share the Deputy's frustration and that of the nursing staff, but we need a system that facilitates us in delivering care.