Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will come to that point shortly but there is a view that if we aggressively chase the virus instead of it chasing us and essentially, were we to screen the entire population in the way we screen our cattle in this country, we could identify where all the disease is and extract it from the population. Instead, it seems to me that we are being bounced around by the virus and, at a certain point, we could be bounced so badly we will be overrun. We would then be into hospitalisations. I put that point to Dr. Henry but, given the short time I have available, I want to ask about ICU if we get to that point. In 2009, the HSE said it needed 579 ICU beds. As I understand it, but the witnesses might confirm the figures on this, we currently have approximately 280. That is a reduction from the 354 beds we had in April. That is very alarming. We are far short of a target set in 2009 before the advent of Covid-19. We are significantly down from the figures we had in April and let us remind ourselves that in April, the hospitals were providing ICU in theatre recovery areas.

The additional capacity we had was completely surge based and unsustainable in the long run. How close are we to our ICUs being overrun?