Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being here. He is obviously incredibly busy and he has made himself available for quite a number of sessions over recent days, so I thank him for that. I come from a county that has had a strangely high rate and prevalence of Covid-19 cases recently. At the moment I think it stands at 40.7 per 100,000, which is incredibly high, considering that Monaghan is such a rural county and, globally, rural areas seem to be a little insulated from some of the worst effects, by and large. Of course, we have a fair sense as to why this is the case in Monaghan as opposed to our neighbouring counties. Predominantly, it is because there is a meat factory in Monaghan and there was an outbreak in it, but we still cannot get answers. On the day it was announced that cases had emerged in the ABP plant in Clones, I emailed the Minister, NPHET, the HSA and the HSE for information on the position on the number of cases because rumours were circulating all over the place. I asked what the official response would be in order to deal with the outbreak. I got a response, in fairness, from the HSA to tell me I should ask the HSE. That is essentially the only substantive response I have received. We have to get on top and take control of the situation regarding meat factories and food processing plants because it is not good enough.

There may, however, be another reason we have a high prevalence. I received an email last Tuesday, at 10.21 a.m., from a constituent who told me about a situation in her workplace. She tells me of two people who worked in her company, one from Monaghan and one from Crossmaglen. Here are the exact words from the email:

Monaghan person feels unwell on a Saturday and rings doc on call. Told they need testing and will be contacted. Contacted Sunday and test Monday. Still waiting for results on the Tuesday. 2 days already missed off work. Could be more depends on when they get results back.

Crossmaglen person feels unwell Sunday. Goes on line at 11 and gets test for 1.30 on same day. Results back on Monday at 7am. They are negative [thank God] so no work missed.

People are asking questions and it is not just a North-South issue. In different parts of this State on different days people have related to me very positive experiences with the testing regime, but there are too many of these anomalies.

This is my first opportunity to address the Minister on health statements, so I have to refer him to the situation of the hospital in Monaghan. Thankfully, the HSE announced back in July that 23 additional community care beds will be restored at Monaghan Hospital. We need services restored to Monaghan Hospital because the implications of the decisions that were made when the Minister's party was last in government are profound. According to the National Treatment Purchase Fund, at the moment there are 755 people waiting for inpatient care at Cavan General Hospital. In January the corresponding figure was 340. The reason for this is that services have been removed from our smaller hospitals. I ask the Minister not to do what his predecessors have done and just fob this off to the HSE. The decision to remove services from Monaghan Hospital was a political one; we now need political intervention to restore services to our smaller hospitals.

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