Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. In his latter comments, the Minister of State said the EU will provide support for medical evacuation. I presume this will be done for citizens of all member states of the European Union, because I do not think we would have the capacity or aircraft necessary to carry out a medical evacuation.

There have already been more than 4,500 deaths in west Africa from this particular virus. Yesterday in Strasbourg, the Commissioner for International Co-operation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response spoke about the possibility of 10,000 new cases of Ebola per week by mid-December. This is really frightening, when we consider that at present the World Health Organization's figure is 1,000. Surely this statement by a member of the European Commission demonstrates the need for the European Union to double the funding level and commitment made available to date.

A particular issue which may be more relevant to the Minister for Health, who is with us this afternoon, is a statement by the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine that it is not reassured by Department of Health and HSE claims of full preparedness should the virus reach our shores. This issue needs to be addressed, and I hope the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, will be able to deal with it in a public statement.

I compliment the people who have gone out to work in extremely difficult circumstances. I also compliment the officials from the Department working in the region, all of the Irish NGOs and our colleagues from every country who are working against the tide to try to bring some semblance of normality to communities which have lost everything. I heard a representative from an NGO of another country state that perhaps the true level of deaths is not being recorded due to the nature of the virus and the fact many people are losing their lives in very remote communities. Does the Minister of State share this worry?

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