Mr. Neil Guckian:

In relation to issues arising from Brexit and their impact on the workforce, we are in the middle of a process of identifying the costs. I am still optimistic that those costs will be funded from the Department of Health as we identify them. Obviously, I will continue to labour that point.

Ms Hanna asked about the learning from Covid and that is a really interesting question. The first learning is around the use of technology and in terms of virtual clinics and virtual working, we have certainly embraced that much more. It has its place and while there are times when it is not appropriate, by and large we need to ask, particularly in outpatient environments, if the work can be done remotely. The second point I would make, in the context of responsibility for services in my area, is that the impact of social deprivation on health outcomes has been much more stark in the context of the pandemic. This includes something as basic as access to vaccinations and the difficulties for people if they have to get four buses to get to a mass vaccination centre. I am extremely proud that the Western Health and Social Care Trust had three mass vaccination centres within its area but even with that, when we analysed the low uptake we found that it was mainly in areas of high social deprivation, and we had to organise more mobile clinics in those areas to make sure we targeted everyone in society. There is also a linkage from social deprivation to chronic disease prevalence.

The third point I would make is on the need for collaboration and there was no better example of that than our approach to Covid worldwide. The same approaches were taken worldwide and certainly within the jurisdiction of Ireland. It has been very interesting to see how we have tackled this in a very common way. Public health messaging is another important issue. Clearly we have become much slicker at public health messaging and we need to embrace that as we go forward into other public health messages. We also need to focus on our workforce and the changing priorities of our workforce. Society is really changing its priorities and people are asking questions about what are the important things in life. I would obviously say that health and social care should be the priority for any society and I am sure all governments would agree with that, including when they allocate funding.