Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the recommendation and that it has been made. To elaborate on recovery for staff, I believe that a comprehensive support package needs to be put in place across the healthcare sector, but specifically in nursing homes because of what people working in that area had to go through. Moving on to the issue of transfers out, an issue that may have been covered already, I am reasonably confident that I was the first person to raise this issue directly with the then Minister for Health. I refer to the need to have two "not detected" swabs before a patient was transferred out. Notwithstanding everything that has been said, we know that was not done.

Turning to what we can learn from what happened, and many lessons are being learned, are the witnesses confident that sufficient capacity exists as we prepare for a surge? We can see from the website of the INMO that the issue of trolley waits is back, not that it ever really went away, and some of our hospitals are nearing capacity. I know what was done the last time we had a surge and that we need to free up capacity in the hospitals. Are the witnesses confident that the required testing regime is in place to ensure that every person transferred from a nursing home into an acute hospital setting will be able to have the two "not detected" swabs before being moved?