Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I deliberately do not use the word "investigation"; I consistently use the word "evaluation" into how we did as a country in dealing with Covid-19. That means taking on board all the issues the Deputy has outlined. We need to learn how we have managed Covid-19 and whether we could have done it better. What lessons can be learned from our experience over the past two years in dealing with a global pandemic, which was the first in 100 years? That would mean we would be in a better and stronger position if another pandemic or emergency arose.

The Minister for Health has established a public health reform expert advisory group. It will focus on identifying lessons from the public health components of the response to Covid-19 with a view to strengthening health protection generally and future public health pandemic preparedness. We are not just talking about hospital capacity, etc., but also the Sentinel system within the GP network.

We have doubled the workforce of public health doctors and support staff. For the first time ever, we have brought consultants into the public health area, which had been denied public health doctors for a long time. We need to get the public health side right because that should be the first line of response to any new pandemic. The key players on Covid-19 need to be at the wheel even still because we need to monitor what is happening with Omicron and where we go towards the middle of the year.

There will be a meeting of the Cabinet committee dealing with Covid-19 shortly to assess where we are right now. The key players are the leadership of the HSE and our leadership in public health.

The model I envisage will draw on different disciplines in the first instance. They would consider the different phases of the pandemic, and what happened in nursing homes would come under the first phase remit. We would have to set ourselves terms of reference, indices and how we compared internationally. I wanted to keep the key players working in the field, so to speak, during the pandemic, so we have not yet settled on a model. I have ideas in how to progress it and at the next meeting of the Covid-19 committee we will discuss the best model.