Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have approximately three minutes. The Deputy raised a number of matters and I will write to her about some of them in the interests of time, as she has asked me to. The number of staff redeployed to nursing homes moves up and down and I saw a number of over 200. The number was 61 last week but I will send the Deputy the figures broken down by community healthcare organisation. I do not want to build expectation around this but I had a very good meeting on home care and I hope that piece will really help. Much work has been put into getting that agreement right. I will write to the Deputy on that and the matter of geriatricians. It sounds logical to me and I am conscious of the fact that we have a geriatrician leading from a clinical perspective in the HSE. I will seek her view on the matter.

I met representatives of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisations, INMO, about nurses' pay as recently as in the past fortnight. My Department has corresponded with the HSE clearly on the matter and my understanding is that 3,400 staff nurses have been appointed to this new scale in our public hospitals, up from approximately 700 in February. Approximately 220 have been appointed in our community healthcare organisations. There was an agreement in this regard and they need to be paid, so this must be processed. We are very keen to see that done very quickly. The contract is voluntary and it does not require somebody to complete an application process but I want everyone who has applied to go on the payroll very quickly. We have corresponded with the HSE and I will write to the Deputy on the timeline as well.

I sympathise with the Deputy on her loss. On the transfers from public hospitals to the nursing home setting, I am aware of the question people are asking. There are a couple of things to mention. First, we should remember that we were trying to move older and vulnerable people out of what was likely to be the surge setting or danger zone in acute hospitals to a safer place. That was definitely the motive followed by everybody.

The Deputy is certainly not doing this, but I know many people are asking who brought the infection into the nursing home. Was it staff coming in, visitors coming in or other patients? The reality is that it is very hard to keep infection out of long-term residential care settings. I am assured by the HSE that testing guidelines were followed and clinical assessment carried out in all situations, but I will confirm the questions I do not know. The commitment the HSE gave was that there were two negative swabs carried out from that point in time. I will answer that in writing to the Deputy.

I will make one point. Dr. Tony Holohan has a graph showing the time at which infection came into nursing homes versus the rest of the community. Certainly it looks like many of the transfers would have happened long before that trend and indeed that an incubation period would have passed. That seems to be the general view.

On testing, there is now a roadmap for getting to 100,000 tests a week. That does not mean we will be doing 100,000 tests a week. I am conscious of not making the mistake other people in other jurisdictions have made about this, but we will have capacity to do 100,000 tests a week by the third week of May - by 18 May - as outlined by the HSE. I believe we sent the Sinn Féin leader a briefing note on that.

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