Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It would be helpful if we could have the exact figures for what is expected to be completed by December 2021 and if we knew how it is proposed to deal with people. According to the last set of figures I have seen, there are more than 5,500 people in public nursing homes. I am not sure how many are affected by not having a suitable physical environment for long-stay individuals. Maybe we could have a detailed report on that.

I want to return to an issue I raised in August, or maybe even earlier during the hearings of the Covid committee. It concerned HIQA and the upskilling of staff. I asked specifically for information on what occurred between January 2020 and March 2020. There was an undertaking that I would be given information on preparing staff for dealing with the new challenges. I never got it. The last time I saw such information was when I saw it published in the Irish Mirror. It got the information on foot of a freedom of information request. My question is on training and upskilling regarding infection control. A new challenge arose in December last year. There seems to have been a huge outbreak of Covid in many nursing homes that had not had any outbreak whatsoever in the preceding ten months. What advices were given to nursing homes once it was identified that there was a new variant of Covid? What level of contact was there between HIQA and nursing homes in December 2020 and early January 2021?