Dr. Tomás Ryan:

I want to come in on the issue of South Korea. There is no real evidence to suggest it is a climate issue. There were outbreaks in Singapore and Japan and other places in east Asia. Nobody, regardless of their preferred strategy, could disagree with the merits of having a South Korean style infrastructure here in Ireland. It would be wonderful to do so. I do not see it happening unless we create a dedicated pandemic response agency and start properly investing in public health medicine in Ireland, which we seem to have been neglecting for a long time. It is noteworthy that New Zealand does not have that kind of infrastructure either, which is why it had to enforce a lockdown to get to zero Covid. However, that cannot realistically be done overnight. Starting from here, we need to figure out how we will manage the next few months.

The Deputy asked about Finland and there does not seem to be any magical ingredient there. If I was to describe my perspective of what is happening in Finland through publicly available information and through talking to colleagues there, it seems they are just doing well everything that we should already be doing, such as limiting contacts, mask wearing, physical distancing and hand hygiene. They also have the advantages of a sparser population density than here, different customs and possibly more compliance etc. It is rational for us to look closely at what is happening in Finland because it seems to me to be one of the best performing countries in Europe.