Mr. Éamonn Donnelly:

I will deal with that because we were involved in the negotiations at that time. The HSE took a very severe position on that issue insofar as they required a consultant's certification that somebody had a vulnerable condition.

If the person did not have a certification from a consultant, he or she was asked to continue as normal or would otherwise not be paid. The practice of ignoring the validation from a GP that a person had an underlying condition seemed to present a significant problem. It is no surprise that a number of workers who were infected had underlying conditions.

Everybody needs to understand that when the outbreak happened in March, we were told that our workers were an army, and a command and control model was put in place to mobilise the workforce to deal with the pandemic on behalf of the citizens of Ireland. That is what happened. However, that cannot be sustained in the long term. We cannot close down community health again.

The capacity issue is why we need inward migration in the workforce. It is no great surprise that the number of infections comprised workers in a vulnerable category because of the severe stance taken by the HSE in that regard.