Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We support the WHO and I hope and believe there is a political consensus in this House in that regard. The Tánaiste, Deputy Coveney, today announced that we are quadrupling our normal annual financial contribution to the WHO this year to €9.5 million.

That is right and proper. It is the very least we can do. It is a global pandemic. The WHO is doing incredible work. Our own countryman, Dr. Mike Ryan, has been to the fore in this work. I will not waste time in my response on what I think of the comments of President Trump on the WHO.

On online counselling, I am aware the Deputy has a major interest in the issue of mental health. We allocated last week an extra €1 million in funding to beef up online counselling, including counselling for staff. I will get the Deputy a note on that. The counselling is online counselling for people working in the health service during this pandemic.

On the issue of the roadmap, the Deputy is right. I assure him there is work under way in this regard and that the work will be led by NPHET. The way to deal with the public health emergency, whether it involves going into lockdown, for want of a better phrase, or reopening, is to remember it is a public health emergency. Everything else flows from that. If one deviates from that path and looks at the matter from an economic perspective rather than a public health perspective, one makes a complete mess of it and must start all over again.

I had a very good call with European health Ministers yesterday and the European health Commissioner on the roadmap published by the European Union on how to reopen countries. I was heartened by the fact that the criteria it is setting are very much in line with the criteria being set by our Chief Medical Officer. The first step is to suppress the virus and examine factors such as ICU admissions, hospital admissions and the rate of growth. The second is to make sure there is capacity in the health service. In other words, it is a matter of determining whether there are enough ICU beds if the virus flares up again. The third step, in respect of which the Deputy is entirely correct, concerns how to have very robust public health surveillance. That includes testing and contact tracing, but there is more.

I absolutely accept we have had challenges in this country regarding testing but I do so knowing that every country has had them. I am pleased to be the Minister for Health in a country that did not throw in the towel and just decide not to bother testing in nursing homes or in the community, and to record deaths only in certain settings. That is not the way we address the public health pandemic in our country.

I will certainly follow up on the issue of people volunteering for contact tracing. I am very supportive of the app. We really need an app. The HSE is at a very advanced stage, with my Department, in respect of launching one. We have been discussing with mobile phone operators whether they would host it as a platform. Other companies are also thinking about it. It would involve people opting in. I believe the Irish people would opt in. They would do so in overwhelming numbers once they knew the parameters regarding the protection of their own data and once they knew it could save their lives and those of their families.

On the issue of research, we have established a research sub-group, chaired by Professor Colm Bergin. On 9 April, I wrote to the WHO confirming Ireland's participation in a solidarity trial for therapeutics for patients in critical care, and designated co-ordinated research trials are now in final planning in respect of opening recruitment for hospitals. I want Irish hospitals to be a part of this. We want them to be to the fore in trying to find therapeutics.

On preparing for future public health pandemics, the Deputy is right. Public health has been the poor relation of health in this country for a really long time. The Department of Health has often been a Department of illness. We ask what we do when somebody gets sick and we realise the real value of public health only at a time like this. On whether we go down the road as in the United Kingdom with the establishment of the standalone organisation, Public Health England, or whether we have a unit in the HSE, as the Deputy suggested, my view is that we should establish an integrated unit that is part of the health service rather than set up other bodies. I am open to having this discussed in this House. Whoever forms the next Government may be able to help us with that challenge.

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