Mr. Éamonn Donnelly:

If I may just comment because I have been directly involved in the discussions to which Mr. King has referred. We have not had sight of any plan for a second wave is the explicit answer to the question. I earlier explained one of the reasons for that. When the national emergency struck, there was a command and control model and a mobilisation of the workforce to do something we had never done before. A second wave, if there is one, will come in different circumstances. On the positive side, we will be better equipped from the points of view of tracing and identifying contacts, and we know more about the illness. On the negative side, we have handed back 300 beds and do not have a workforce plan of which we have had sight. People would be wrong to think that it is possible to have a new command and control model that will have the same effect. The difference will be that there have been delays in cancer diagnostics for a number of months. Therapeutic interventions for vulnerable people have been delayed for a number of months and disability services have closed down for a number of months. The system will be unable to absorb that. We will go into a second wave while having to keep the other services I have mentioned open. It is beyond me how the HSE's Be on Call for Ireland initiative only yielded 125 staff members. That is staggering. It will not be possible to do the job and keep the health services live with an extra 125 people. If the civil and public service model and Be on Call for Ireland initiative are our staffing sources, those staff members need to go to areas of need. The HSE needs to get on top of that.

That is how we should prepare for a second wave. It is high time that preparation was tabled for discussion and not in a command and control manner. We should expect a second wave and expect to be able to deal with it alongside the provision of the rest of the health services.