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

While acknowledging in this section of the Bill the tremendous and courageous efforts of our health workers, we should also acknowledge all front line and essential workers, including shop, transport and council workers and all of those who are doing everything they can to help get us out of this crisis.

I agree with the Minister, Deputy Harris, when he said that there is no place in the crisis for a two-tier health system. Overnight nationalisation of the health service has been impressive. The Minister has said that healthcare should be based on medical need and not the size of one's wallet. Should it take a pandemic that threatens the deaths of thousands of people to convince our political class that we need a one-tier health system or that it was unacceptable to force our nurses out on strike in pursuit of decent pay and conditions in an effort to stem the haemorrhaging of health workers from our system? When this crisis is over we will never return to a dysfunctional two-tier health system or the routine disregard for workers like nurses and other staff. There must be no going back. We need to emerge from this crisis a with a truly national health service.

The measures in the Bill do not address many of the key issues facing the country. It is beyond belief that, in the middle of this crisis, we are still allowing non-essential businesses to function. The call has gone out several times today, but it is a policy that will only rapidly increase the spread of the virus. We need to shut down all non-essential work. I repeat this call in the case of the construction industry, in particular.

Yesterday, in Moy Park in Northern Ireland and in ABP meats, workers walked out to protect their own health and safety. That scene should be repeated collectively by workers around this country if the Government does not make the right call. It is right to do it sooner rather than later.

I will highlight a couple of gaps in the Bill. I do so because we are acutely aware of the most vulnerable in society, particularly those in direct provision, in Traveller sites, people living in overcrowded homes because of the housing crisis, the homeless people living in emergency accommodation and those who are forced to wander and cluster on the streets because they have nowhere to go during the day. Along with that, another cohort is women who are vulnerable in the case of crisis pregnancies. We have put down an amendment to the Bill to allow for telemedicine rather than GP visits for early intervention in crisis pregnancy. I appeal to the Minister and to the Government to allow that amendment.

Something we need to tease out is the tolerance of not taking necessary measures. We need to take into public control facilities, factories and industries that can produce personal protective equipment, PPE. We need to instruct them to stop producing other equipment but to produce the PPE that is urgently equipment. There are hundreds of factories producing medical equipment in this country and we need to bring those sectors into the control of the State rather than leave it to the chance of the market or to decisions of some shareholders or CEOs.

Today we have more than 40,000 anxious citizens who were promised a test and who now are not getting it. They are at home wondering if they have the virus if the symptoms are showing and they are told to not worry, to self-isolate and that will be good enough. With the HIV virus in the past, knowing one's state of health encourages one to understand the ramification of one's actions and that others understand that the ramifications around one's actions also matter. The question of changing the testing regime has as much to do with the lack of capacity as it has to do with the statistics. The Taoiseach frequently refers favourably to the South Korean model where they tested, tested and tested and where they ferociously contact-traced. South Korea test five times as much as we are doing and in the course of that, they are ferociously contact-tracing. If one self-isolates alone there is no contact-tracing follow-up.

I make the following suggestion. There is a factory in Northern Ireland called Randox and it is working, along with other companies, to produce a testing kit that will give us results in two and a half hours. In this all-island crisis I encourage the Government to approach the Northern Ireland Executive to open up discussions with it that the plant be taken into public control for the health of the island. The testing equipment should be produced 24-7 as soon as possible and rolled out in the interests of public health. Polymerase chain reaction, PCR, machines that check tests all over this island currently lie idle in universities and in pharmaceutical plants. They need to be audited, requisitioned and taken into public control. We have no time to waste. The sooner we do these things the better. It may seem like an ideological challenge to the Minister but I am sure so did nationalising the public health service. It can be done and it needs to be done urgently.

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