Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I would like to ask the Minister about visitors to residential care facilities. Many people have not had a chance to have physical contact with their parents or grandparents since March. They can now see them through a screen but it is not quite the same thing. There is a balance between quality of life and infection control. None of us will live forever. The idea of keeping people physically separated from their children and their grandchildren is very difficult to bear. Is it possible for the Minister to go back to the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, and ask if there are ways we can reduce the risk while allowing people to have physical contact, or at least to be physically close to each other? For example, could people meet outdoors in the summer? Could they meet while wearing personal protective equipment, PPE? If they cannot actually hug each other, they could at least get closer than a screen will allow. Could the Minister talk to the NPHET about that and see if some progress is possible?

Lastly, I wish to raise the question of recruitment of staff. This is a general problem to which the Minister has already referred today. We train medical staff and they leave Ireland. That has not been a problem in the last few weeks because nobody is allowed to leave. At the same time, we do not have the intake of staff from other countries that we would normally have. Is somebody working on a plan to retain the Irish staff members who have decided to get jobs within the Irish system, which are presumably available because nobody is coming in from abroad? Would it be possible to launch a campaign to retain staff so that they do not all fly the coop once the flights start?

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