Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the vaccines played a very significant role in the protection of life, especially the life of older and vulnerable cohorts. The truth of the matter is that the Omicron variant spread at a rate of 500,000 per week towards the end of the last wave. In many ways, it is the spread of Omicron through the population that led to it having nowhere else to spread. That contributed to the end of that wave as well.

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, came before this committee recently to discuss the salary of the Secretary General in the Department of Health, Mr. Robert Watt. This is a burning issue in the minds of many people around the country because we could not create a bigger contrast between the experience of the general population and that particular salaried individual in the public sector.