Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To start with Deputy Kelly's questions, the Department of the Taoiseach has not brought in additional staff to deal with Covid-19, as I stated in my reply. It has reprioritised and reallocated work within the Department, as senior members of the Department have been dealing with it on a consistent basis since the outbreak of the pandemic early in the year. The judgment call was that it was better to have senior members of the Department and officials dealing with this matter rather than recruiting freshly into the Department. There is a requirement for experience and co-ordination in the wider Civil Service effort, working with the Department of Health and through the Covid co-ordination Cabinet subcommittee.

There has been fairly extensive work by the officials and I put on the record of the House that, despite all the argy-bargy, we need to reflect from time to time on the extraordinary work that senior public servants have put into the management of Covid-19 on behalf of this country. It speaks to the importance of a strong, highly resourced and high-calibre public service to deal and intervene as a State when something of the order of this global pandemic arises.

I can give Deputies a breakdown later of the posts in the different divisions of the Department. On the wider issue of staffing and public service pay in general, obviously the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform plays a stronger role there. Deputies Boyd Barrett and Barry spoke about how the HSE recruits staff. Since the new Government took office at the end of June, I have been constantly in touch with the HSE, and from the get-go I have been working on the idea of a separate workforce for contact tracing and testing. The chief executive of the HSE and the Minister for Health have been pushing very strongly for this and we have one of the highest rates and volumes of testing in Europe. Denmark is ahead of us when it comes countries of more than 2 million people. The contact tracing side is improving, and while extensive, can be more extensive and we will work on it.

The vaccine will be a major logistical exercise and work is already under way on that. I said on previous occasions in the House that the European Union Commission has signed three agreements so far with Oxford-AstraZeneca, Janssen and Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals. They are exploring the options and I hope they will be in a position to sign off with three other companies, so that by the end of the year, we might have some indication as to the feasibility of those vaccine research projects and when we will have a vaccine ready. It will take some long period in 2021 before it can be rolled out. It will be a major logistical exercise in itself.

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