Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I would prefer to leave the people at the press conference to give the data and explain it because they have real, up-to-date expertise in the area.

What I want to make clear is the strategic approach the Government is taking. It is the wider strategic approach that we, as members of the Cabinet and the Government, have to consider. There is no shortage of support from the Government or of flexibility and effort if we find ourselves in a difficult winter period due to the Covid pandemic progressing in a direction we do not want, or to influenza, or to a recurrence of the problem of people on trolleys, which is a perennial problem every winter.

The key strategic point I want to make to the Deputy, which I believe it is the important point, is that we will use the flexibility we learned during the Covid pandemic to make sure our health system removes some of the obstacles that exist there. That is not a data point but it is the key point in terms of how we improve our health service at this difficult time. We will use strategic decisions such as the development of online, eHealth systems that our system has developed in the Covid period to solve this problem. That is the emphasis we need to make and the important lesson we need to learn. It is what we now need to deliver.

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