Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The question crosses over a couple of sections. Palliative care does not come under my remitper se; rather it comes under the remit of the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly. From the well-being point of view, it comes under the remit of the Minister of State, Deputy Feighan. There is no doubt that in terms of the challenges that people have faced over the last 16 to 18 months, they have not been in a position to grieve as they normally would. In the early days, for example, the first three to four months of Covid, older people were cocooning and were not in a position to attend funerals. My aunt, aged 89, died on 1 April. She had eight siblings, all close in age to her, and none of them were able to attend the funeral. Speaking from a personal point of view, that experience has been extremely traumatic for people.

I was delighted that in last year's budget funding was provided for bereavement counselling. That is something we will look at again going forward. Phenomenal work is being done by the Irish Hospice Foundation to support people at this time. I firmly believe that we need a national day of mourning, or a national day of commemoration, to remember all those who died in the last 18 months. I am speaking not only of people who were bereaved because of Covid, but people who were bereaved by a natural end of life. This has been challenging for everyone. People have felt a sense of loneliness and despair because they could not have the normal funeral. One sure thing about us in Ireland is that we support people very well when they lose a loved one. Older people were acutely upset about not being able to grieve in the normal way.