John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will not take the full time because a number of the questions I wanted to ask have been asked.

I thank the witnesses for attending. I accept that the questions I was going to ask have been asked and the witnesses have answered them.

I will go to the opening statement we received from the national clinical director of integrated care at the HSE. I will read the witnesses some of the points relating to the post-acute clinics established by the HSE. I want to ask about three or four points. The HSE says:

Patients can be referred between Post-Acute and Long Covid clinics, depending on their symptoms. In some patients that are referred, the symptoms with which they present are not attributed to Long Covid, and the patient may be experiencing worsening of an illness, eg. asthma, or present with a new diagnosis.

It goes on to say, "It is worth noting that for many the referrals to the Post-Acute Covid Clinics, symptoms originally attributed to Covid are, in fact, explained by other specific Respiratory diagnoses." At another point it says it did not reach the 10% response rate it wanted as regards carrying out a scientific survey on long Covid. The witnesses refer to long Covid as a disease in their opening statement. The HSE clinical director, summarising in the last paragraph of her statement, says "Long Covid is a new clinical entity, characterised by a wide variety of symptoms, for which there is, as yet, no evidence-based treatment". There is therefore a lot of contrasting language used.