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

The European Council discussed co-ordination in the fight against Covid-19. It should be self-evident that at European and national level we need an integrated and properly resourced approach to combat Covid-19. It is worth dwelling on the fact that countries such as Germany have managed better because they have a tremendously well resourced and well staffed integrated national health service. This contrasts with our fragmented semi-privatised understaffed and underresourced service.

The Taoiseach discussed co-ordination and contact tracing at the European Council. The debacle over contact tracing has everything to do with something I highlighted last week, namely, that the HSE is recruiting people on the worst possible temporary contracts. I fundamentally disagree with what Deputy Alan Kelly said today, that the solution to this is to separate contact tracing from the HSE, when the opposite is necessary. We need an integrated publicly run health service whereby workers in contact tracing and throughout the health service are paid properly as part of a single well-resourced health service. Does the Taoiseach agree this is the problem? The reason we do not have a contact tracing system, why hospital front-line healthcare workers are overrun and why we have high infection rates is because it is not properly staffed and we do not properly look after the health staff. We have this ridiculous situation where contact tracing, which is essential for us to be able to get on top of the disease, is outsourced on rubbishy contracts to workers in a fragmented, poorly organised system. This is the key and we should move in the direction of paying contact tracers and other front-line workers properly, giving them decent jobs, staffing things properly and resourcing the front-line services we need to challenge Covid.

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