Ms Patricia King:

I agree with the Deputy and thank him for the query. The Deputy is correct. This regulation 224, put in in 2016, excludes personal injury. In the Act, accident is defined as personal injury and personal injury does include any infectious disease, but the regulation, in 2016, came along and excluded it. My judgment is that the employers are hung up about the mental health issue there and they did not want to have this - what they believed to be onerous. That is my own judgment of what was going on at that particular time. However, this regulation was signed up to anyway.

As to what can happen, section 58 of the Act allows the Minister to lay an amended regulation before the Houses of the Oireachtas, but it becomes valid from the time of its making unless and until it is amended by the Oireachtas. We could resolve this problem quickly. So far, the Tánaiste stated he was looking at it.

The HSA, in my judgment, has obstructed our efforts because it is now talking about it requiring a major risk impact assessment. There is nothing about that in the legislation. I cannot see it anyway. Accordingly, we need to put this right. We do not have time. The virus is doing all the damage the Deputy outlined. We need to put it right. We need to get a grip of this and do it.