Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I replaced the Minister of State on the Covid-19 committee when she was appointed to her role. I thank the Chairman of the committee who did an excellent job.

While I welcome the report, we have been a little premature bringing the work of the committee to a close. We could probably have done with it being in place for longer, particularly in light of how things are with the virus. We have seen Covid-19 cases increase as communities reopen, even though we are in lockdown. I am troubled to see the rise in the number of cases. The Minister referred to this matter.

I am especially concerned about the figures suggesting that funerals could be the super-spreader event. My heart breaks for those who have had to watch from afar as their loved ones got sick and passed away from this lethal virus. They have not been able to celebrate the life or mourn the death of their loved one, surrounded by family and friends, as is so typical of an Irish funeral. The virus has stripped us of a vital part of our grieving process. If someone in our community passes away, we all want to show them the respect they deserve and we want to be there for their funeral. Of course, we want to take precautions by wearing masks and so on but, for Irish people, it is part of our culture that we always go to funerals and we like to be there to support people. That is a big thing for us.

The Chairman went through the data and I have been going through them myself. The data on contacts and outbreaks are forms of information which we should have in a safe place in order to investigate them, and that place is the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response. This is why I wonder whether we should have kept the committee going, and perhaps the Minister needs to consider this. I found the committee very informative when we were learning so much about this disease, but we still have a lot to learn. I welcome and applaud all of the advances which have taken place in regard to vaccines, and I want to especially mention the Irish companies and scientists working hard in this area.

We know we will be living with Covid but we cannot live with lockdowns which threaten our economy, although the number of cases is still rising. In a few weeks, hopefully, we will move from level 5 to perhaps level 3 or level 2, although we are not sure yet what level it will be. For me, the biggest issue dealt with by the special committee was testing and tracing and the speed at which this could be done, which was the greatest concern for all of us. The Minister said that the quicker testing and tracing is done, the better. Given the outbreaks in nursing homes and meat plants, we need to make sure we also have outbreak management. We need a management team and we need to be stronger on that issue because it is so important we do not have big outbreaks like those that happened before.

We cannot afford another lockdown. If this one does not work, we risk losing businesses, losing the public and losing lives as well. One issue I found challenging in the committee was access to information, and I know the public found this too. We have had huge challenges. While this report can only make recommendations based on hindsight, I know all of us will agree we were all learning. The figures today are horrific, with 2,000 people having died from Covid and many families affected by that. Even where people got Covid but did not pass away, thank God, many are severely affected and have pains and aches, and they are not able to work. The side-effects of Covid have been very difficult and people are struggling.

We are living in a different world. All of us in the House have a duty of care to the Irish people and a duty to come in here and work together. The worst that can happen is if we do not work together to find solutions. We need to work as a team and do our best to make sure we do not have any more deaths from Covid. That is the one thing I have learned from the Covid committee. We were an all-party group and I believe we worked well together. We were there to make sure we did our best to support the Irish people, to give as much information as possible and to try to help in any way we could. We were all contacted by businesses and by different groups. The economy was affected and businesses came to us, telling us they were not going to survive. We had to be very careful on that issue. We have to make sure that, when we get a vaccine, which I firmly believe we will, we are in a situation where the economy survives and we have jobs for people. We have to be very careful of that.

I thank the witnesses who came before the committee and gave us the best information they could. Covid knows no boundaries. Covid does not know political parties. Covid does not know us and we do not know it. However, the one thing we have learned from Covid is that we live from day to day. Every day, I listen to the news to get the figures to know how many deaths there have been and how many are linked to certain areas and to my own area of Carlow. That is the way our life has gone. As we are trying to live with this, we have to try to live with it in a way that ensures people are not affected by it. That is the duty of care we have.

One of the biggest Covid issues for me was the hospital appointments missed, the disability services that were not open and the respite that could not be attended. There was such a knock-on effect. Nonetheless, all of us in the House were trying to do our best in our contacts with Ministers and in trying to get the information out there. Perhaps we need to look at our messaging and advertisements, and to see if we can be more proactive. However, I know everyone is trying to do their best. All of us in the House are trying to work in our constituencies to make sure we can help with regard to information. Whether it is for a pandemic unemployment payment or otherwise, all of us are trying to make sure we do our best.

Mental health is an issue I am concerned about in the context of Covid-19. Many people I have spoken to recently are very down and very affected by this. We do not know what is going to happen. Hopefully, when we move out of level 5 to lower level restrictions, we can get back as much normality as possible. Christmas is coming and we have to be positive for the people of Ireland. We are in level 5 for a reason, and that is to make sure we save lives. This is what the Covid-19 committee was about. It was about information and asking people to take self-responsibility. All of us in the House and outside it have the responsibility to make sure we play our part and do our best to ensure no one we know in our areas dies.

Everybody has gone through such an horrific time. To me, 2020 will be remembered, in my time anyway, as one of the worst years in history, when we were trying to learn about and deal with something we never thought would come. Earlier in the year, we were all getting ready for a general election. We then got elected and then Covid came, a disease that none of us knew anything about. All of us on the committee played our part as best we could to engage with our own areas and constituencies, while working at a national level through the Ministers to make sure we delivered what we could. This is about information and recommendations, but if we learned one thing from this, it is that all of us are here to represent the people of Ireland. We need to do that in unity. We need to work together to make sure we have no more deaths in Ireland and that we look after the Irish people.

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