Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

If I may respond to some of them, one of the issues we have been raising for some time is that there needs to be devolved authority to nurse managers. There is not at present. The WHO and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, for example, were advocating that we look at the wearing of FFP2 masks for greater protection in early January. We had to lobby the HSE and wait for a national circular from it before the practice was allowed to change across the health service. Nurse managers gave a testimony to us that they went and sought these masks and their release to staff when they asked and they were refused. In one location staff were threatened with disciplinary sanction if they continued to ask for those masks. Eventually, we got a letter from the HSE which opened the door and allowed the policy change in respect of what was appropriate to wear during the third wave and, obviously, with the higher contagion of the new variant.

I hope that answers the Deputy's question. It illustrates how bureaucratic the system is. There is a significant amount of national control.

Health and safety measures have to be put in place much more quickly. It cannot be a case of always waiting for an incident to occur. Preventative measures have to be in place and thought about because this pandemic is changing all the time. With new variants, we will need agile and quick responses to protect workers. That is simply what is missing.

On the issue of the availability of staff etc., I refer to the whole area of Sláintecare and the fact that 82% of care of older persons services are privatised. There are many waiting lists etc., but there is 30% availability of private hospitals. Surely the committee can comment on that, considering that there is bed capacity of 1,900 beds, a large proportion of which are single rooms, in the private sector. They should be playing a greater role during a pandemic.