Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I hope the Minister is right that when the tide of this illness recedes, most of Ireland will be as it was. However, my worry is that when the tide of this illness recedes, there will be serious collateral damage within small and medium-sized businesses. Many such businesses will not reopen as a result of the economic damage that has been done in the past year.

On the issue of the capacity of the health service, ten years ago we were meant to have 500 ICU beds. We entered this crisis with approximately 270 ICU beds. At most, that was increased to approximately 350 beds. The number of ICU beds per capitais far lower than that in other European countries, which had, therefore, a bigger health service cushion to deal with the outcome of the illness and, as such, did not have to rely on severe lockdown as much as Ireland did. I appreciate that we will not get more detail from the Minister on future fiscal policy.