Mr. Rory Fitzgerald:

One of the legacies is that people who never had a mental health issue have struggled with mental health throughout the pandemic because of restrictions and because we were locked down for a period of time. It is particularly the case with the older cohort. A friend of mine in his early 80s, who is active, said that a year of his life is a huge chunk. Some people will struggle who did not struggle in the past. Some people are struggling to go back out into social situations because of fear. In terms of how that can be resolved, we have to help those people. We certainly get calls around those issues from people. All the things that happen, such as loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and depression, were magnified throughout Covid-19, and there is probably a fall-out to come from that, which we would be concerned about.

There are also people whose businesses are not going to survive or whose jobs are going to be lost. We need to mind those people. Our key message is to get people to talk and not bottle that up. If they do not talk about it, there will ultimately be a negative effect.

They are the key things, aside from the positives the Deputy mentioned, such as people coming together, which is the good side. However, there are people who will struggle, who perhaps never struggled in the past.