Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

As this is my first time to speak in the House, I will take the opportunity to thank the people and voters of Dublin West for giving me their support and electing me to Dáil Éireann. I am aware of the huge responsibility of this role. I hope I can repay the trust afforded to me by the voters of Dublin West by working hard for them and by taking every decision in the best interests of my constituents, our country and our planet. I also pay tribute to two former Deputies who were unsuccessful in this election, Joan Burton and Ruth Coppinger, both of whom have made major contributions, locally and nationally.

Right now, coronavirus is dominating the media cycle and the wider political discourse and this week I have hardly had a conversation in which it has not featured. There is real concern out there. I thank the Minister for the briefing he gave today and for his commitment to providing ongoing information to the House. In this climate, it is particularly important that those in authority, be it the Government, the Minister or the HSE, give clear and unsanitised information to the public. We have seen how in China and Iran the initial response of the authorities was to deny and suppress information. This has contributed, at least partially, to the particularly severe nature of the outbreaks in those countries. Indeed, even today in the United States of America President Trump invented his own statistics on mortality rates and offered his own advice on self-isolation. This approach erodes public trust in authority and, as such, when public health authorities have a specific message to deliver to the public, it undermines people's trust in that information.

We currently have six cases in the State. When one considers the trajectory of coronavirus in other countries, it is likely that the rate here will increase. There is a real possibility that the increase will be quite sudden. If we do see a sudden leap in infections and they are not put in their proper context, there is a real risk that it could create public panic. It is important to recognise the existing capacity and expertise that our national health services have in dealing with major outbreaks. Each outbreak has its own unique characteristics and our health services are already responding to the particular characteristics of Covid-19. The National Ambulance Service has introduced a home-testing scheme that will, in many circumstances, avoid the necessity for potential patients to go to hospitals in order to be tested. As ever, it is the hard work of our healthcare providers and those who work on the front line that will be the best defence against this outbreak.

Coronavirus is more dangerous to the more vulnerable members of our society. I urge the HSE to pay special attention to those who might often slip though the gaps. Ireland has a significant homeless population and many of these people are not in regular contact with our healthcare services, or they suffer chronic illnesses due to their living conditions. Other groups of people living together in close proximity are those who live in direct provision or those who are incarcerated in prisons. These people are also vulnerable. There is a significant outbreak of coronavirus in Iran's prisons that has necessitated a large-scale temporary release of prisoners there. Due to the vulnerability of these groups and their circumstances, people who are homeless, those in direct provision and those in prison do not have the same agency as everybody else. I ask the Minister and the HSE to provide guidance to these groups.

As we address this evolving global healthcare crisis, we in Ireland are already experiencing a crisis in our health services. We were experiencing this crisis long before the first case was diagnosed in Wuhan. We have come out of a general election where priorities were identified by the public as being our healthcare services, housing and climate change. Most people I have spoken to accept that the solutions to these problems are greater investment and a bigger role for our State. It is the Green Party's view that the scale of this investment would eliminate the capacity for many significant tax cuts in the medium term. In the context of any possible programme for Government negotiations, the Green Party has been very clear that using the available public resources to invest in the day-to-day services and in putting money into the necessary major infrastructure capital projects should take precedent over any potential tax reductions. Our experience from the recent election campaign is that this is what the public demands of us.

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