Mr. Tadhg Daly:

As I said in my opening statement, staffing is a challenge that is shared across all of the settings. Over the weekend we heard acute hospitals appealing for staff. This problem is not unique to nursing homes, unfortunately, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It is the single biggest challenge. That the existing staff are working above and beyond the call of duty, working additional shifts and additional hours, is keeping us all going at this point. It is important to acknowledge that.

The other point that the Senator made with regard to vaccinations is critical. We need a very extensive protocol to ensure nobody is denied vaccination, particularly those in the most vulnerable categories.

We need to be very careful about moving residents off-site. We are looking at the most frail and vulnerable people here so we would expect that vaccination would happen on-site and every effort needs to be made, in the first instance, to go down that avenue.