Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We may well end up at a public inquiry into what happened in nursing homes. I know Deputy Kenny and many other Deputies have been advocating very strongly for that. The loss of life is heartbreaking and, understandably, relatives are asking whether all that could be done was done. We have to look at this now, not with the benefit of hindsight but with the benefit of understanding that what was done happened in a crisis the likes of which had not been seen before. I am aware, as is the Deputy, of some very serious incidents, both in terms of individual nursing home residents and of very high mortality rates in particular homes. As the Deputy said, the various agencies of the State have been looking very closely at what happened. I am sure Deputy Kenny has seen the HIQA report which looked at the half of nursing homes that did not have Covid outbreaks and how prepared they were before the pandemic. I have asked the authority to do the same report for the other 50% of facilities. Most important, we have had the nursing home expert group report, which contained 86 recommendations.

I hope the Deputy agrees that the number one priority for us all right now is making sure everything that can be done to protect nursing home residents and staff is done. The focus now is on what we have learned, what has worked well here, what has not worked well here, what has worked well in other countries and whether we are doing everything we can to protect the people most vulnerable to this awful virus. At the same time, it is absolutely proper and essential that the families of the residents who have passed away or become very sick get full transparency as to what happened. I do not believe that now is the time to start a public inquiry because we are focusing on keeping people safe. However, I am most definitely open to the idea. I want to see what happens over the next while, work with Nursing Homes Ireland, the expert group and the implementation committee, focus on keeping people safe and saving lives, and then see what is the most appropriate way for families to get answers to their very reasonable and pressing questions.