Dr. Sharon McGuinness:

I cannot discuss the details of any protected disclosure, but I am not aware of the one to which the Deputy referred. If it was reported to the Minister for Health, it may have gone to the HSE rather than the HSA. All protected disclosures ultimately come to my attention. I will certainly look into the matter because I am not currently aware of it. We always respond and do our best to talk to the complainant if there are particular queries. There is a different mechanism for addressing protected disclosures within the HSA, as opposed to a complaint or request for information through our workplace contact unit, for example.

We referred to education in our submission. We provide it as part of the protocol. The HSA is very focused on fostering, promoting and ensuring improvements in health and safety and on prevention. That also applies to Covid. We put huge effort into producing checklists, templates and posters for lead worker representatives. We produce them in plain English and we work with the National Adult Literacy Agency, NALA, to produce them in other languages as well.

We have produced training courses for the lead worker representative and Covid-19 induction. They are all freely accessible and available, and about 280,000 of those have-----