Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The colour coding system is a proposal from NPHET for consideration at Government level. The Government is putting together the new detailed roadmap which will be available for debate and discussion in the Oireachtas in the coming weeks. Regardless of what is decided in the new roadmap, between now and Christmas we are in a new chapter. The strategy is: follow the public health advice, suppress the virus to keep society and the economy open, use localised approaches where we can which, thanks to the people of Kildare, Laois and Offaly, we know work, and critically target the measures at the areas and activities where we know the virus spreads in order to protect everything else in our society and the economy staying open.

On infections among healthcare workers, I agree the number looks very high. Any infected healthcare worker is one too many. There is no doubt but that the level of infection, prevention and control measures that are now in place were not in place previously.

That is not a criticism of the occupational help provided or of the amazing healthcare workers in our system. It is a novel virus and it hit us quickly. We had not dealt with anything on this scale before. I assure the Deputy that very rigorous infection prevention and control measures are now in place. However, we must never stop and say that enough has been done. We have to keep going every day and week and we have to keep tightening up on the protections, not just for our healthcare workers but for our patients also, not just for those working in the nursing homes but for the residents also, and so on.

The Deputy asked an important question that weighs on my mind a lot, which is what happens to healthcare services if there is a second wave. The short answer is that nothing good happens. As we all know, before Covid-19 arrived, we had the longest healthcare waiting lists in Europe and the new information on how long they have become because of the elective care that had to be paused makes for sobering reading. One of the reasons the winter plan we will propose is so comprehensive is in order that we will be able to deal with Covid-19, have surge capacity, get the healthcare system running to deal with day-to-day demand and, ideally, start looking at these waiting lists as well. We will minimise the disruption to healthcare but we have to be clear that if we are dealing with a serious second wave of Covid-19 in this country, healthcare services will, for a second time, be severely curtailed. That is why it is so important for us to get the message out that we are at a tipping point and that if we all comply with the healthcare advice from NPHET, as the people of counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly have shown, we can suppress the virus. The best way we can all protect healthcare workers and the best thing we can do to make sure our hospitals and community settings stay open is to suppress the virus in the community.

I will get the Deputy a written response to her question about saliva tests. The short answer is that the matter has been discussed by NPHET.