Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies. There were quite a few questions there and as I have a limited amount of time, I will respond to each of the seven questions that have been tabled in writing. I want to reassure Deputy Connolly because at the heart of her questions is this idea of why long-term residential facilities were not the first priority, presumably because of the vulnerability of the residents living there. I assure her that from day one, work has been done on this. HIQA, the regulator of the nursing homes, has sat in the national public health emergency team and has done a good job. Guidance was published in February and meetings took place in February before we even had a case of Covid-19 in Ireland. We know that every year, whether it is with the flu or the vomiting bug, it is very difficult to keep infections and viruses out of residential settings. We know it is difficult to keep infections and viruses out of our homes and we have homes with large numbers of people but that is not to say efforts were not made. However, it is right and proper, from a public health point of view, that when the virus is suppressed within the community, and it is thankfully looking like we are beginning to do that in Ireland at least at this moment in time, that sectors that need more supports are then further honed in on.

I said this earlier and I mean it: I would not like to think how much more difficult things would be in our long-term residential facilities today had the virus not been suppressed in the community. Residents are not going out of the facilities, the virus is being brought in. The more that the virus is prevalent in the community, the more it can come into a long-term residential care facility, including by essential staff who are doing a very good job.

I have a detailed note, which might be best to send to the Deputy in the interests of time, on what we can do to work with Irish companies. We are not reliant on anyone else to provide us with PPE - work is ongoing on that - but the short answer is that it is about speed and the time it takes to ramp up production here when we need the PPE yesterday. That is the challenge that we are trying to work our way through.

On Keelings or any other firm, it is not the job of the national health emergency team to consider individual applications. The airports are open and people can come into the country. The issue is for them to give advice on what should happen when any of us comes back to or into our country. The answer I gave to Deputy Shortall earlier indicates the direction of travel in that regard, perhaps tightening the monitoring process so one does not ask people if they would mind self-isolating for 14 days but would ask them where they will self-isolate and that there will also be an ability to check that. That is important as we begin to open up the country more in due course.

On Deputy McNamara's question on hardware shops, it has been much debated. The view of the National Public Health Emergency Team is that they should only be open for emergencies as of now.

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