Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

The discussions are ongoing in respect of opening up the health service to Covid and non-Covid services. The problem is that we are still awaiting a funded workforce plan. It is something we have sought and it needs to be put in place. We have guarantees, for example, that both Covid and non-Covid services will have to be provided.

We have sought that the workforce reflects that. If I was a nurse in an emergency department tonight, I would be providing either a Covid or non-Covid service. There are not two of me but there are two services. That is for the very reason the Deputy just outlined.

The important point about this virus is that it does not discriminate. Its aim is to infect people so we have to make sure we prevent it from doing that. If that means some members of the workforce having to remain outside it, the health service has to make provision to supplement the remaining workforce. What happened recently is that there was nobody to call on and, therefore, those who were at work were working short-handed. Ms Murphy can attest to that. There were 19 nurses on her ward. Twelve of them got infected and were absent from that ward, but the patient load did not decrease. We know from WHO statistics that infection rates are higher among those who are fatigued. The nurses who remained on that ward were exposed to a higher risk of infection purely because of fatigue. We need a funded workforce plan for nursing and midwifery. Fianna Fáil's pre-Government submission sought to increase the workforce quite substantially. We are eager to have that conversation. We are meeting the Minister this afternoon and will raise that with him, as well as with the HSE. That is the story in the public sector.

In the private sector, the workforce collapsed very quickly because its baseline was insufficient to begin with. We have to look seriously at reintroducing the public provision of care of older persons. We cannot rely on the private sector to the level we have. Some 82% of all care of the older person services is provided by the private sector and the workforce is not sufficient to endure another flu or another wave of Covid-19. It is simply unfair and inhumane to ask it to go back to that level of crazy staffing.