Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

With figures increasing over the past week in respect of Covid-19, we all know now that we are at a crossroads. I want to make a couple of points to the Taoiseach and get his response. Dr. Ronan Glynn said we are going to be living with this for the next six to nine months and that it is going to be a very difficult period. I am glad that he referred to that length of time because people needed to hear it. I have said before in this House that when Covid came, it was the best time for us, as we had spring and then summer. We are now facing into a very difficult six months.

Over the weekend, I met Mairéad, who is over the age of 70. The one question she had for me was whether she would be able to see her only child, her daughter, who is working in London, at Christmas.

I was taken by that because the whole lot of us in the political system, including the Opposition and the Government, need to sign a contract from now until Christmas with the public to say that we will work together and follow a roadmap, which the Government will lead, and then Mairéad might see her daughter at Christmas. Then we will need to do another three-month contract from New Year's Day until St. Patrick's Day so that we can break the back on the difficult six months that are ahead of us. I ask the Taoiseach to commit to something like that. None of us have all of the answers but we need to break this down for the public because they are fatigued and worn out. We need to do it in bite sizes from here until Christmas and then from New Year's Day until St. Patrick's Day. I ask the Taoiseach to consider what I have just said and the Labour Party is happy to sign up to working with the Government on that.

I was taken by what was produced in the winter plan last week. Beds are an important issue but there is no point in having the beds if we do not have the staff. We need to be ingenious in how we will get all of these nurses, doctors and consultants in such a short space of time.

The other issue I want to raise with the Taoiseach is non-Covid healthcare. I have deep concerns about this, especially after talking to people working at different levels in the HSE over the last two weeks. I know the Taoiseach will not have the answer to this today - I am not trying to catch him out. I ask him to do a comparative analysis of coronary care and cancer care to see how many people are being treated and diagnosed month-on-month compared to last year. I would like to know the answer to that because I do not know what it is. Anecdotally, we have all heard of issues with the volume of people who may not be diagnosed this year and that is worrying because we all know that the longer it goes on the less chance one has of survival, particularly with those seriously acute conditions. Could the Taoiseach provide that information to us? I will ask the Taoiseach this question again next week in order that he can provide the answer. I will give him a week to come up with the answer.

Given what Dr. Glynn has said, will the Taoiseach consider a roadmap that is based around two pivotal dates - Christmas and St. Patrick's Day - so that the political class can collectively look at supporting that to get people through the next six months? Will the Taoiseach carry out an analysis of non-Covid critical health issues so that we can see whether we are dealing with them appropriately, as we tried our best to do last year, for example?

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