Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

A catastrophic crisis is unfolding in our meat factories. Last week, 40% of all new Covid-19 cases in the entire country were among meat workers. That crisis was preventable but the State agencies, and the Ministers responsible, were asleep at the wheel. Does the Minister agree that it is scandalous that there were zero on-site Health and Safety Authority, HSA, inspections in regard to coronavirus until Monday, 18 May? More than two months after the pandemic really hit Ireland there were zero inspections on-site despite the fact that there had been close to 300 complaints. Does he agree that it is inexplicable as to why the Minister responsible for the HSA and the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, Deputy Humphreys, would say last Thursday that she did not know how many meat factories had been inspected at that point in time and that she did not need to know?

We were having a special debate in the Dáil about this catastrophic crisis and she did not have any figures and did not think that she needed to. Does the Minister agree that it is outrageous that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine dismissed concerns raised almost a month ago about meat factories as an attempt to smear factory owners? Does he agree that we need urgent inspections of meat factories? This is a significant problem in that only 67 HSA field inspectors have been allocated to deal with coronavirus-related issues. Where will the needed inspectors come from and when? I have a second question which I will come back to.

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