Mr. Paul Reid:

I thank the Deputy for his comments. I will ask my colleague to respond to his last question. He asked about learnings and I have a few brief things to restate in that regard. What I knew in February and March 2020 was that the public were scared. Our staff, healthcare staff and clinicians were scared when going to work. Decisions had to be made at pace. I told Oireachtas Members at the time that I would be sitting in front of them in the future and I would be accounting for the things we got right and things we will do differently in the future. One of the biggest scares we had related to our consultants, nurses and doctors making decisions about who would receive ventilation and who would not. We did not get to that situation and I am proud of our public service in that regard. We punched well above our weight and much stronger than many other countries across the world in terms of our procurement of ventilators and PPE. I was involved in teams who were on calls to China and across Asia on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings in order to procure PPE. I would get up again, after an hour's sleep, to arrange the logistics and distribution of all of that equipment. That is the pace at which we were operating and I am proud of the public service in that regard. Having said all of that-----