Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Covid is nobody's fault. Nobody in the Government is engaging in any sort of blame game. That is the game of others. This is a virus. Nobody is to blame for it whether here or north of the Border. I will not speak for the Minister, Deputy Donnelly; I understand he is to issue a statement later in the day. I can, however, speak for the Government and for myself. I can give the facts. Nobody in Government had any indication that consideration was being given to recommending a move to level 5 until Sunday. This was confirmed by the CMO at last night's press conference. It was a shock; it did come out of the blue. We were not prepared for it nor was the country.

What do I mean by "out of the blue"? The recommendation came on Sunday, only three days after NPHET had said in writing that it did not strongly support a move to level 3 nationally at that time. It was also not in line with the parameters set out in the Government's framework - a leaflet explaining it has gone through every door in the country. Under this framework, restrictions are to be escalated in steps. The criteria for reaching level 5 had not been met. A decision of such gravity needs to be talked through and thought through. I refer not only to the reasons for such a decision, but its implications for people, the exit strategy and co-ordination with Northern Ireland.

To clarify and to be very clear, the Taoiseach, the leader of the Green Party and I were informed on Saturday that a meeting of NPHET had been called for Sunday. There was no suggestion, not even an inkling, that level 5 was being contemplated. Had we known that, we would have sought an urgent briefing that night. That is what could, and should, have happened. The first indication I had that level 5 was being considered came on Sunday evening, after the NPHET meeting had taken place. I received confirmation in writing at 8.30 p.m., setting out the recommendations and the reasons for them. For some Minister, the first they heard of this on the news.

I appreciate that the Deputy may want to make a big deal about which Minister knew what and at what time on Sunday but that is not the point. The point is that we had no indication that this was even being considered until Sunday. We need to move on from this. This should not be NPHET versus the Government or the Government versus the Opposition; this has to be Ireland versus the coronavirus.

The Government is acting in response to the escalating situation. We took the decision to move the entire country to level 3 only the other day and I believe the Deputy's party supports that decision and the decision not to go to level 5. If that is not the case, the Deputy may wish to say so. That decision is being implemented. We know that level 3 was successful in counties Laois, Offaly and Kildare. We can also see that it might be working in Dublin but it is too early to know for sure. The R-nought number, however, seems to be down to approximately 1. It will be the best part of ten days before we know whether it is working in the rest of the country but it is something on which we are acting.

Capacity is an issue in our health service. It is very often an issue. Going into this crisis, we had well above the European average number of nurses and about the average number of doctors at 3.3 per 100,000. We were a bit below average as regards hospital beds when compared with other countries but had more than countries such as Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada and New Zealand. I could go on. Since then we have added 800 acute and subacute beds to the system, approximately 150 of which are currently being used by patients who have Covid. We have also increased the number of ICU beds, which was 225, by approximately 60. Approximately 25 or 26 are being used today. We have increased capacity and will increase it further.

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