Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

There are reports today that 26 out of 28 patients at a nursing home in Galway have tested positive for Covid-19. One of these residents has died, and our hearts and prayers are with that resident's family. The nursing home said that it received no help from the HSE and that, for the past 72 hours, one nurse and one care assistant attended all those patients. That is an absolute scandal.

2 o’clock

Regarding the oceans of rhetoric that existed around the issue of Covid-19 for the past seven months, the most important element always should have been the protection of those nursing homes. Men and women in nursing homes are by far the most vulnerable and the most exposed to this illness. The majority of deaths from Covid so far have happened in nursing homes. That is incredible because I asked the Minister a number of times to investigate what happened in the nursing homes after the first wave at the start of the year. I asked the then Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, to do the same. Both Ministers refused point blank to do an investigation into the nursing homes. We heard rhetoric about learning new things, etc., yet we have a situation today where a nursing home in Galway is ravaged by Covid-19. It is so frustrating to get one's head around the fact that no investigation was held into what happened at the start of the year, and now we are seeing it happen again.

I refer to the case of Mary Bartley Meehan, in my constituency. Her husband was in a nursing home. He had a cancerous tumour on his face. When Mary visited him, she noticed that his fingernails were too long and that he had scratched the facial tumour to such an extent it had become infested with maggots. I asked the then Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, and the current Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, to carry out an investigation into that family's situation. Both Ministers said, "No"; the HSE said, "No"; HIQA, said "No"; and the Department of Health says, "No".

We had to listen to Deputy Fergus O'Dowd earlier looking to get the Government's defence in early with regard to what has happened in Galway. He sought to build a paper wall between the State and private nursing homes and to wash the Government's hands with regard to responsibility for nursing homes. That is incredible. The Minister and the Government are responsible for what happens in all nursing homes. All nursing homes should be available to be investigated. There should be no paper wall stopping that.

The Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is in the Chamber. He might recall that I asked him to look into how we can investigate what happened in Mary Bartley Meehan's case. I mentioned at the time that the Ombudsman stated that there is great frustration in his office that they do not have the power to investigate what is happening in private nursing homes. According to the programme for Government, the Government will investigate what is happening in private nursing homes yet we are not near that point. It is very frustrating to see it happen again.

The previous speaker, Deputy O'Donnell, asked what Government policy is with regard to living with Covid-19. Let us be very clear. There is no Government policy beyond six weeks. There is no exit plan out of this other than a vaccine. That is incredible. I spoke to the HSE earlier and asked if there is a chance to get a vaccine to the population of this country by the end of 2021. A definitive answer was not given but I could tell by the tone of voice that it is very unlikely that 60% of the population of this State will have a vaccine by the end of 2021. That means we will be continuing in this situation indefinitely with a Covid yo-yo policy, which is having major detrimental, negative effects on the whole of society.

Do not get me wrong. This is a serious illness. We need to do our best to keep those numbers down and, like all previous speakers, I believe we need to do the simple stuff right but we also need to learn to live with this illness. There is a cost to Covid but there is a significant and real cost to the restrictions. It is a cost that the Government cannot quantify because in seven months it has not researched the cost of restrictions with regard to mortality, morbidity, mental health or any of those issues. We are pushing hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, and that will cause morbidity and mortality in the future.

The idea of imposing fines on a population that is radically losing their income and being pushed out of work is incredible. Levying fines on the population is equal to the Government raising a white flag and saying, "We have lost". They lost the support of the population in the first wave. The energy, commitment and focus of the population was singular in reducing the numbers. The Government has changed the policy on fines because it knows it has lost the support of a significant section of the population on that issue.

The Government is taking draconian measures. Ireland is an outlier in European terms with regard to the severity of restrictions. Even in Paris, with its restrictions, people can attend church services, shop and go to restaurants. Why is Ireland an outlier in respect of restrictions when in reality we are mid-table in the incidence of the illness? There are two reasons for that. First, our tracking and tracing system has crashed; it is as simple as that. We can no longer extinguish the virus where it exists through tracking and tracing. The second reason is we do not have the ICU capacity of other countries. A budget totalling €18 billion was announced last week yet the Government hardly moved the dial with regard to the increase in the number of ICU beds. The front line of the Covid-19 battle rests on the shoulders of the people because the Government has not put in the necessary defences in tracking and tracing. At the start of this year there were 2,000 tracers in the country; there are only 500 now. How does it happen that we go backwards in the number of people employed by the State to trace this illness?

There was a sense of frustration across the country today when the news unfolded that 26 out of 27 residents of a nursing home in Galway had caught Covid-19 and that the nursing home called out for help and received none. It had two staff members-----

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