Mr. Paul Reid:

I have two things to say on that. The way the process works is that the guidance to the Government as to potential impacts, concerns or recommendations regarding the opening the economy will come through the CMO and the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET. That is the process. From the HSE's perspective, we are obviously keenly focused on the impacts on hospitalisation and ICU admissions and the impacts on our hospital service in general. After every wave of this virus, we have suffered significant impacts not only on Covid care, but on the care services we provide more widely. Our concerns relate to sickness, illness, hospitalisations and their impact. There is certainly evidence emerging from Public Health England demonstrating the impact of the variant, particularly on those people who have not been vaccinated or who have not been fully vaccinated. The HSE has two key messages. The first is that we want to monitor things closely because we cannot let what happened in January happen again, where hospitalisations reached over 2,000 and when more than 200 people were in our ICUs. This had an impact on an already exhausted healthcare staff. That is what we in the HSE will be watching. NPHET will provide advice with regard to opening up and the Government will make the ultimate decision.