Mr. Paul Reid:

In terms of the first part of the question, and I have said this a lot over the past week, I want the public to be aware that while we are dealing with lower numbers of hospitalisation, of which there were 114 this morning and 17 in ICU, than we had at the peak, which was more than 800 hospitalisations and 150 people in ICU, the impacts are still very significant because people will have heard - the Meath consultants, Dr. Motherway and Dr. Michael Power - talk today. It can be significant because what happens is one starts to get some of our wards frozen and having to be isolated. That has been the case in some instances in Beaumont Hospital, the Mater Hospital, St. James's Hospital and in other hospitals around the country. A small number of cases can have a significant impact. The big differece is right now we are aiming to restore all of our services and bring back as much elective cases as we possibly can and all of our services that we spoke about earlier, whereas in the March-April period we had ceased all of our other services. We are running a dual system in all our services, both in our acute system and in our community system, a system where we are trying to protect against Covid and at the same raise up all of our other services to a level that we need them to be. That is the challenge for us right now, today.

Significantly, if the virus continues in this upward trend, as in March-April, then I would make a few comments. First, it would be evidence of mass community transmission levels that has gone beyond our capacity to withstand, and to continue to track and trace. One would be dealing with very significant community transmission which, ultimately, is not a place we want to reach. I refer to where one starts to get, which has happened in European countries today, systems and community services being overwhelmed.

As part of our winter plan, we have put in the very significant Government investment of €600 million for all of the dual pathways. These will put in a whole range of initiatives to keep people out of hospital as much as we can, to treat people in a much better way at home, and to keep our elderly people at home with 4.7 million extra hours. There is a range of initiatives to protect against such a scenario but if the situation became absolutely overwhelming then that is when we would really need to do everything we could to stop it happening.