Ms Mary Dunnion:

What we saw at the time in question was a completely different response landscape. With the HSE, we had a formal escalation pathway for any areas we needed to escalate. We had identified members of the crisis response teams across each CHO area, and we had interaction with all the nursing homes because, as the Deputy knows, reporting of confirmed Covid cases daily is mandated to us. In the third wave, which was at the time to which the Deputy is referring, we saw enhancements in the responses that were being provided across the community through the CHO areas and we actively engaged and participated in that. It was a very responsive situation. We could see that there was significant learning between March 2020 and what happened in December 2020 and onwards.