Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I agree with all Deputies that the response to this issue includes all of us as individuals and our personal hygiene, and that how we conduct ourselves is crucial. If I start coughing, please do not panic. I do not want a national panic on television because a Deputy is coughing. I have a cold. We should be discussing the overall response of the State to this serious crisis. In the public eye, and at the briefing earlier, the HSE has been downplaying the seriousness of the lack of capacity to deal with a significant rise in the spread of the virus. Anybody who has had reason to visit an accident and emergency department in the past six months has had the experienced being in a war zone. Trotting out advice to self-isolate and stay at home will not convince the public otherwise. Giving minor statistics, such as the number of beds increasing from 12 here to 22 there, will not help to deal with the capacity problem. The public needs a much more thorough explanation.

One measure taken in Britain would be useful, namely, the testing of existing patients in hospitals who have chronic lung problems in order to ensure that they do not carry the virus. At the briefing earlier, I raised the issue of the inadequate supply of hand sanitiser in schools but I did not get a satisfactory answer. There was no acknowledgement of the matter except to say that children are better off washing their hands than using hand sanitiser. As we know, however, in many schools there is not an adequate supply of hot water or paper towels for children to dry their hands with. Drying them with hand towels is a no-no.

I agree with Deputy McDonald about cross-Border co-operation.

It is in a national situation such as this that one realises how farcical and unworkable partition is and that we need an all-Ireland health service with an all-Ireland response.

I want to raise the question of intellectual property rights. We were told this morning about a company called Gilead Sciences, that has a base in Cork. Ironically, Gilead is also the name of the spooky medieval country in The Handmaid's Talebut apparently Gilead Sciences is developing an anti-viral drug. Intellectual property rights are important because in the privatisation of medicine and cures, intellectual property rights can be held onto by a company without being shared with the public services and the people who work therein who have the knowledge and experience of dealing with anti-viral medication. We need to move away from that. There should be a global discussion to say no company should have the intellectual property rights to an anti-viral drug that may find a cure for Covid-19. I wrote to the caretaker Minister, Deputy Harris, about the pharmaceutical industry. LloydsPharmacy, which is notoriously anti-trade union but which has many branches across Dublin city, particularly in working-class areas, has almost doubled the price of hand sanitation lotion. Many people have phoned or emailed me to complain about this. I have asked the Minister about this and I asked again this morning what the Government intends to do about this. Can the Government intervene to stop that exploitation that seeks to never waste a good crisis by profiteering? If not, will the Government at least issue a public condemnation of profiteering from this crisis? I agree with the ending of access to two-tier medicine.

On the issue of workers' rights, we are exposed in this country as being weak and as often providing non-existent protection for workers. We already know how poor workers' rights are in Ireland in comparison with the rest of the European Union but it is a decrepit system and the statutory rights of workers were changed in 2013 by a Labour-Fine Gael Government when the three-day period without sick pay was effectively extended to one week. If one looks at what Boris Johnson is doing, he has already acknowledged that in the first week, everybody will be paid from day one if they have to self-isolate. It is a bit of a stretch but it makes him look a bit like James Connolly compared with what the Government is doing for workers' rights. We have heard nothing about it. We have seen correspondence from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, to IBEC. We have seen pronouncements from the WRC which state there is no obligation to provide sick pay and where companies do not have a sick pay scheme, there is no obligation for them to provide it. It beggars belief that we are not recognising the needs of workers, particularly low-paid workers and workers in the gig economy, to have a basic living income if they have to self-isolate. There will be a reluctance on behalf of these workers to acknowledge they have symptoms and that they need to stay at home because poorer workers and workers on low pay not only depend week by week on the money they earn but often day by day. We do not depend on our wages in this way and neither do many other people but we need to recognise that hundreds of thousands of workers do. This State needs to intervene and pass emergency legislation that allows sick pay from day one, which increases that sick pay to a living wage and provides that, if necessary, employers will be faced with an extra levy or extra taxation to pay it. We cannot allow workers to not be able to self-isolate where necessary. This is not just a workers' issue; it is a public health issue. I hope we can move immediately to introduce legislation on that basis.

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