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

Yes, in my view, relative to other countries at this juncture, we did well, particularly in respect of mortality and severe illness. Similarly, ours was one of the most successful vaccination programmes globally. The booster campaign, too, was vital in dealing with the Omicron variant. I think we have placed sixth in the European Union in terms of lowest mortality rates. As for the economic recovery and employment, there has been a very significant bounce-back, which means the economic interventions the Government made during the pandemic worked. They have got people back to work quickly as we have emerged from the pandemic. Even so, there are all sorts of issues arising as we bounce back from the pandemic in regard to inflation, which is a big issue. Fundamentally, however, we are back to 2.5 million in employment, which underpins the success of our economic and employment policies. The Bloomberg resilience metric, which measures a range of factors such as health, mortality and socioeconomic impact, for quite a while was ranking us as number one. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned and we will have to conduct a proper evaluation of the response.