Dáil debates

Wednesday, 6 May 2020

European Council Meeting: Statements

 

2:10 pm

Photo of Helen McEnteeHelen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the Deputy's general comment, while everyone accepts that the initial EU response was not as quick as we would have liked, one of the challenges in responding to Covid-19 is that we are facing a health crisis. What happens in our health system is different from that of Germany, France or Greece. It is a national competency, and trying to respond collectively to the crisis was difficult. While we fell down in certain areas, we have tried in the initial stages - whether through the relaxation of state aid rules, the response investment initiative, the €750 billion provided through the European Central Bank or the three other pillars that, we hope, will be in place by 1 June - to provide funding to invest in our healthcare systems to ensure that our priority is to save lives and protect the health of our citizens.

One matter we are discussing, and the Commission has published a paper on this, is how we will exit the crisis safely. The exit strategy is very much in line with what we have been looking at here in Ireland, whereby we will have an increased capacity for testing and for contact-tracing. Most importantly, not only if there is a second wave of Covid-19 but if anything like it happens again, we will have capacity within our hospitals to deal with it. We all need to reflect on the matter. Health ministers in the EU are engaging regularly as to how we can, collectively, respond to this kind of crisis again. It has highlighted gaps that we will need to fill, whether in respect of personal protective equipment, or types of medicine, medical equipment or machinery. Acknowledgment will certainly be taken that there are areas in which we need to improve. Health is still a national competency and we cannot move away from that, but we can certainly learn from this and from one another.

The second issue was not raised at the latest European Council meeting but I will get a response back to the Deputy.

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