Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Big efforts have been made to get our hospitals ready for a surge, which have been successful. Efforts were also made to ensure that surge was as small as possible, which, too, have been successful. The same efforts were not put into getting the nursing homes ready for Covid-19. As we sit here today, seven in every ten Covid-19 fatalities in Ireland are from a nursing home or community care home. Nursing homes are desperately short of staff and personal protective equipment. A nurse told me earlier this week: "Many of our residents have psychological conditions, there is Covid-19 in the air, Covid-19 on the walls and Covid-19 on every door; our senior nurses are all-out with Covid-19 or are self-isolating; we cannot get staff and we cannot get the masks that we need." In this regard, there are two contributory factors. As Covid-19 began to move through the country, nursing homes did not have a voice with the Government or the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET. The Government's Covid-19 action plan from mid-March mentions nursing homes only once and only then as facilities to which patients could be discharged from hospitals. There is no mention of supports needed for nursing homes. What of the public health emergency team? According to the minutes available from January to end March, the first time nursing homes were mentioned by NPHET was at its 12th meeting on 10 March. At that meeting it was agreed "that unilateral or widespread restrictions of visiting, which the nursing homes and some hospitals were implementing themselves, is not required at this time." The first time nursing homes were mentioned by NPHET was essentially to advise them to stop their own restrictions. It was a further three weeks before the minutes show that NPHET agreed that action was required on nursing homes. This was at the end of March. The minutes show that NPHET made the decision to close the playgrounds a week before it decided that support was needed for nursing homes.

NPHET has about 45 members and 11 subcommittees. GPs, patients, people with disabilities and the voluntary sector are all represented; nursing homes are not. Nursing homes are represented neither on NPHET nor on any of the subcommittees. The Minister's position is that nursing homes do not need to be represented because they now have good access to him, which is fine, but the Minister also said in his weekend interview with Hugh O'Connell that every single decision he makes on Covid is informed by NPHET, that not a single decision he has made has not been recommended by NPHET. I am not disputing that, but if that is what he is saying then with the greatest of respect, while it is fine that the nursing homes have access to him, surely in terms of effecting policy they must also have access to NPHET.

Will the Minister as a matter of urgency give the nursing homes representation on NPHET? Can he say how many of the NPHET meetings he has attended and at how many of them he has brought up these concerns that the nursing homes have been raising with him?

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