Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I know it is late on the Friday of a bank holiday weekend, but some of us are here. It is a pity that the Minister is not here for these comments. I do not know if some excuse was given. It is unfortunate because spokespersons want to raise a number of issues and it would have been good if we could have done that with the Minister.

We have repeatedly rehearsed the reasons we find ourselves needing to go into level 5. It is unforgivable in many ways that so many elements of what we were supposed to have been doing were not done properly. The key element of the response to Covid is testing and tracing and we now see serious problems with both elements of that. Given that that is the linchpin of the Government's response, it is very hard to understand how that has not been sorted out by now. For various reasons certain things have not been delivered as promised.

We now have no choice but to take radical action to try to drive down the levels of the virus. That radical action is playing havoc with everybody's mental health, their well-being generally, their lives, their livelihoods and so many other things that we used to take for granted as normal life. It is hard to support an approach like that which entails such severe lockdown. It is doubly hard to do that while wondering why on earth we have got to this stage and why things could not have been dealt with as it had been promised they would be.

About three weeks ago I raised with the Taoiseach the question of the clocks going back. I suggested that he consider the possibility of us not changing the clocks and keeping with summer time. That is not a straightforward thing, but on balance it would have had many benefits, not least an extra hour's light in the evening, which would have been really important from the point of view of people's well-being and also people working during the day having some opportunity to get out in daylight and so on. Generally, it would have helped in a small way in lifting people's mood. Since I raised it, there has been a very strong response from across the country. Many people and particularly older people have asked why we cannot do that. The case is all the stronger given that it looks like there will be a move at European level for us to change next year. It would have been an opportunity to try that out. It is not something drastic because we may well be doing it next year anyway. This year in particular, given the major difficulties people are dealing with it is regrettable that it was not done. I think we will rue the day that suggestion was ignored as we go into the coming weeks and as the evenings get progressively darker from Sunday on. It is a pity that did not happen.

It is very hard to understand why the issue that arose today with the sanitiser happened. It is more difficult to understand, given that it came to light on Tuesday, that school principals were only told about it very late last night. That resulted in some schools closing today because they could not get organised in time to find an alternative product. I heard suggestion on the radio today that the same product, which is regarded as being dangerous, was not only used in schools but may have been supplied to other facilities including nursing homes. It is important that we get clarification on that. While I do not want to give it legs if there is not a basis for it, we need to find out if there is any basis for it.

What is the HSE doing now? The priority must be to get public health advice out to people. I am sure many parents around the country are wondering if one or other symptom their child might have is related to that sanitising product. For that reason, we need a public statement on that from a public health perspective. We also need an assurance about the product having been withdrawn from all the places it was supplied to and also whether it is actually being sold anywhere. Steps must be taken to withdraw it. We are somewhat left in the dark on this. There has been no further clarification since this story broke in the last 24 hours.

The next issue I want to raise is rarely mentioned here. I have not heard the Minister refer to ventilation. Increasingly in taking steps to drive down the rate of the virus, the role of ventilation seems to be very significant. I am not aware of any action having been taken in that respect or any minimum standards having been set down. It comes up frequently. Professor Orla Hegarty raises it frequently in terms of construction. Other experts talk about it in the media. Many machines are available, including some that have been developed in the past year, which filter air to a very high quality. It is not clear if that message has been taken on board. Has anything been done and have any standards been set over ventilation in nursing homes? That needs to happen. I would like to hear the view of the Minister for Health on that.

I have a real fear that we will repeat the mistakes of earlier in the year in high-risk settings such as nursing homes and meat factories. We had disasters in both earlier in the year, largely because both sectors have large numbers of poorly paid staff with poor conditions, in precarious employment without entitlement to sick leave. It happened with disastrous consequences with people having symptoms of Covid or who thought they might have Covid, but they could not risk taking time off work because they could not afford to do that. That greatly contributed to the spread of Covid in nursing homes with awful results and also in meat factories and the subsequent spread back into communities. I cannot see that anything has happened to avoid a repeat of that disaster in both those sectors. We will not be forgiven if history repeats itself in respect of those two issues.

That is why regardless of any commitment to do something about a national scheme next year, there must be some kind of emergency provision at this point for workers in those two settings.

I refer to testing and the type of testing that is being done. A point made regularly is that the PCR testing in Ireland seems to be done to a much higher level of sensitivity than is required or used elsewhere. That has never been explained. We often hear people with expertise in this area talk of how we use this higher standard, which picks up minute traces of the virus that may be a few months old and the person concerned is not contagious, yet we declare those people to be Covid-positive. Last week, at one of the few briefings provided for the Opposition, I asked the CMO to send the papers to me. I have not received them yet, and I hope he does send them on, but no clear explanation has been provided. It is a very basic question and I would like the Minister to respond on it.

A specific measure in level 5 is the reduction in the number of passengers allowed on buses to 25%. It is causing major problems for people who have to go to work, as many must do, including emergency and essential workers. They are being refused onto buses and are having great difficulty getting to work in the morning and returning home, sometimes waiting an hour or longer to get a bus. If we are going to do this, additional buses must be provided to facilitate essential workers to go back and forth. That is one way we can show them some bit of respect.

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