Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I raise the shockingly slow pace of Government formation in this State. Tomorrow will be 90 days since the general election took place. In the teeth of one of the largest crises the country has ever seen, we have a Taoiseach with no mandate and a Cabinet comprising some Ministers who are not Deputies. We have a Legislature which cannot legislate and a Dáil that has little ability to scrutinise the decisions of the Government. That struck me last week when the Taoiseach made his decision around the complex elements of the extended lockdown. The Cabinet made the decision, the Taoiseach drove it past the Dáil and presented his document on RTÉ television. We, in this Chamber, should have the ability to engage on all aspects of these important issues and we did not have that opportunity last week.

I welcome the new Covid-19 committee. It is a proposal that Aontú made two months ago and I am glad to see it finally coming to fruition.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the Covid-19 crisis is that we have a mammoth crisis and we do not have a mammoth response to it. There is a mismatch between the capacity being used in this country and the size of the crisis. I learned yesterday that 2% of the 2,000 people who have been trained to contact trace were doing so last Tuesday. A total of 40 people, out of 2,000 who have been trained, were contact tracing last Tuesday. That was not an outlier because only 70 people were contact tracing yesterday. We have very low numbers conducting contact tracing compared to our capacity.

Last week I learned that out of the 72,000 people who applied to answer Ireland's call to work on the front line of this crisis, only 51 people were in the employment of the HSE and doing that work. Ireland's call was launched as an opportunity to harness the solidarity and good will of healthcare workers around the world to get to the front line and fight this. It turned out, to be honest, to be a hollow PR husk. Only 51 out of 72,000 applicants were working as of last week.

There are currently 1,400 empty hospital beds. That is an incredible figure. There has been widespread cancellation of procedures and appointments. Serious hospital avoidance has been going on for the past number of weeks. It is frustrating to see the mismatch between the available capacity and the actual capacity involved in fighting this crisis. Nearly 2,000 people in the North and South of Ireland have lost their lives. I urge the Minister to ensure that we equalise that mismatch.

There is also the problem with testing. We are 40,000 tests below the objective set by the Minister nearly two months ago. The Minister and the HSE talk about capacity to test all the time and yet we are testing below capacity. There is unused capacity and that is no help whatsoever to anybody in this State. We should be sweating all the capacity we have to fight this crisis. Why, given the massive cost to the State of the continuing lockdown, are we not sweating the capacity available in the system?

The Minister and the Taoiseach have always stated that the decisions they make are on the basis of the best medical and scientific research and evidence. I asked the HSE yesterday what research it has done into the outcome of the massive hospital avoidance and appointment and procedure cancellations. I asked what is the modelling and forecasting for people's health with regard to what is happening. The HSE has stated to me that there is no modelling or forecasting happening in the HSE at the moment as regards the future impact to health, morbidity and mortality in this country. The Minister is making decisions on one important aspect of public health, namely, the development of this virus and the effect it is having on society, while not doing research on other aspects of public health. I have heard other Deputies say that it is likely that the number of deaths from other illnesses could exceed the deaths from Covid-19. That means the Minister is not making decisions on all of the facts and is neglecting the opportunity cost to the healthcare system.

Will the Minister commit to proper scientific modelling on the human cost of the mass cancellations and hospital avoidances happening in the State? Will he then develop a plan to allow us muster our resources, both human and financial, to be able to deal with the potential tidal wave of healthcare cases that will come down the road very shortly?

In terms of my final question for the Minister, 819 people have lost their lives as a result of Covid-19 in nursing homes throughout this State since the start of the Covid crisis. There is a long and tragic list of serious mistakes that have been made by the State in regard to those nursing homes, from the three-week delay to closing down the nursing homes to visitors, to the lack of the necessary staff and PPE, to the residents of the nursing homes and the workers within those nursing homes, to the massive delay in testing. More than two months ago we were told we would have blanket testing of nursing homes. That is just coming to completion as we speak. I refer to the delay in promised funds for nursing homes. More than two months ago we heard that millions of euro would be invested in nursing homes but only in the past ten days has that started to trickle into those nursing homes. I refer also to the absence of the critical engagement of Nursing Homes Ireland, who are the people who know what is going on in nursing homes. There has been a string of fatal mistakes which have had tragic effects in Ireland. Will the Minister commit to a proper public investigation of that mismanagement simply for the purpose of making sure that this never happens again in our country? Obviously, a public investigation cannot be held at this time because all resources have to be pointed towards the particular crisis we are in but when this crisis has subsided, please God, will the Minister commit to making sure that we have such a public investigation?

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