Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to challenge the Taoiseach's assertion that he is on top of dealing with the Covid-19 crisis. His Government has already lost its way in dealing with Covid-19 and if things do not change we are facing a very serious situation and the likelihood of a second wave and we will not be in a position to prevent that becoming a very significant problem if not a disaster.

As well as the obvious need to state simply that non-essential travel into this country will not be allowed and that people will be checked on the way in, the other key area, the front line, which we seem to have completely forgotten about, is the capacity of our health service to deal with a second surge and, possibly, with influenza outbreaks, which are likely to increase in the autumn.

I do not know if the Taoiseach heard the pretty alarming, frightening testimony of Siobhán Murphy, a young nurse, at the Covid-19 committee this morning, who had no underlying health conditions, was working in a Covid-19 ward, was infected with Covid-19, as were 12 of the 19 nurses on her ward, a number of whom were hospitalised with very severe symptoms, and who described her psychological trauma as a result of having to work in these conditions and the impact of Covid-19 on her. She was absolutely clear, as was Phil Ní Sheaghdha from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, that chronic understaffing and a lack of capacity in our health system was at the root of us having the highest infection rate among healthcare workers of those infected anywhere in the world. The global proportion of healthcare workers infected of all of those infected is 10%. Here it is 34%, and in the past two weeks it is 46%. Nearly half of the infections that have happened in the past two weeks are among healthcare workers, and this is even with personal protective equipment, PPE, because they are working 12-hour shifts, are not getting breaks, and are fatigued, frightened and traumatised by the situation. Critically, they are chronically understaffed. We have 1,000 fewer nurses in the health system than we had in 2007. We need 5,000 additional nurses to drive up the capacity of our system.

We are desperately under-resourced and under capacity to deal with a possible second wave, yet all we hear about this week is guarantees for banks and big economic stimulus. It seems as if the Government has forgotten about the health pandemic and all it is concerned about now is business. Will the Taoiseach heed the call of the healthcare workers to embark immediately on an ambitious campaign of recruitment to drive up the capacity in our health service, to double the ICU capacity, and to make Covid-19 infections in our hospitals a notifiable issue so that the Health and Safety Authority, HSA, can be called in to assess the health and safety conditions that our health workers are in? Will the Taoiseach support our health workers not just with words but by resourcing them and preparing for what is coming if we face, as we very likely will, a second wave of this infection in the autumn?

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