Mr. John King:

I will be brief and will try to avoid being repetitive. I agree with my colleagues on the importance of the statutory agency assuming the required levels of responsibility. The figures speak for themselves. No other sector of employment has suffered the same infection rates as the health sector. The reasons healthcare workers are here is that they work in HSE and healthcare settings. For this reason, the HSE needs to be involved in making sure that all that can be done is done to protect healthcare workers in their employment.

I will make one additional point. As a society, we waited for the pandemic to arrive before we reacted. We have an opportunity, while Covid has abated to the extent that it has, to ensure the policies and procedures we implemented very early on are not repeated because in some cases some of those policies and procedures did not help with the level of infection rates that occurred. We have that opportunity now.