Dr. Siobh?n N? Bhriain:

Just to say, there is nobody here who is a paediatrician so I cannot say we have had direct clinical experience of it. We have certainly been contacted by families of children and we advise them on the most appropriate direction of travel for them in their particular area and that particular child. People of course contact us about that. We have a national clinical adviser for children, Dr. Ciara Martin, and I keep in regular contact with her on how we manage it. We are reviewing the evidence first. The incidence of long Covid in children has been very small. I have to be honest that the studies have also been very small, so it is difficult to extrapolate from that. As I said to Deputy Hourigan and others, we are reliant on some of the information that comes to us from HIQA, which goes from newborns all the way up; there is no age limit. We have heard of symptoms such as brain fog and other difficulties in children. The clinical evidence we have - again I am reliant on my paediatric colleagues but I work closely with them - is children recover faster than adults and their symptoms tend to resolve quickly. The Senator is right that we have experience of this in other areas, like glandular fever, as Dr. Bannan has mentioned. Children and adolescents have prolonged symptoms from those conditions. The recommended pathway developed by my clinical colleagues for children is that if they require specialist care after being seen by a general paediatrician, they can be referred on to the appropriate consultant - respiratory, cardiology and so on.