Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses.

To go back to some of the data from the HPSC, it may have been helpful to set out very clearly at the outset that we have all been using the same data from 11 July. Of the 26,076 Covid cases, 8,347, or 32%, were healthcare workers, with 319 hospitalised, 49 admitted to ICU and, very tragically, seven deaths. We are agreed that 30% of the cases were in nursing homes, residential institutions and community hospital long-stay units. We are all working from the same figures. Only 8.6% of cases are linked to an outbreak in a hospital. I wanted to set out these figures. In another submission, we have information that the difference between hospitals and the other settings is likely due to more robust supply chains for PPE in hospitals. I am very sensitive to the presence today of Ms Murphy who, along with her colleagues, was using PPE but contracted Covid-19 at some point. She said that 12 out of 19 of her colleagues contracted it in circumstances where they had been using PPE in a hospital. I want to ask a policy question and perhaps come back to Ms Murphy afterwards.

We have separate data which show that 56% of our nursing homes have no cases of Covid-19. Can we talk about those congregated settings or those intensely populated settings? We also have the prisons and the Central Mental Hospital where there have been no cases. Has any of the unions received feedback from members in other settings about how they managed those protection processes better or was it something else?