David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome everybody to the Chamber and, in particular, the Chairman, Deputy McNamara, who did a very good job over the course of the months that the committee sat. I cannot say I agreed with everything the Chairman said before, during and after the publication of the report, but he was a very diligent Chairman. It was a very useful committee that sat at a very important time, and it played a very important role in terms of guiding the work of the Oireachtas at a crucial time. I commend the Chairman on his work and all of the committee members.

It is important for us to say it is too early to look back yet. There has to be an element of look-back but the virus is still present, contagious and spreading and the cases are still too high. Next week, we will have a debate in this Chamber on where we should be after 1 December in regard to restrictions. I welcome the debate but it has to be said that it will come before NPHET advises the Government. That will be key, in my view, to determining what we should do or not do. People want a good Christmas and they deserve the very best Christmas we can give them, but we also have to be honest that it is not going to be the same as last year or the year before. It is going to be different but let us make it the best one we possibly can. However, that will throw up all sorts of issues, which I am sure we will debate next week.

When we look at Covid, and take a step back and look at the committee's report, there are lessons we will have to learn and changes that will have to be made. I want to deal with a number of issues and my colleagues will deal with others. The first is nursing homes and the whole issue of care for older people and the elderly. We saw there were real problems in nursing homes right across the State. Far too many people died in nursing homes, some in very tragic circumstances where they did not see their families before they died.

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We know that issues relating to clinical governance and the lack of adult safeguarding protections that I believe we, as an Oireachtas, should advance and which I spoke to the Minister about need to be delivered upon. Many reports have been done on nursing homes and we have to implement the recommendations. We will also have to consider setting up processes that will allow families to get closure by finding out exactly what happened to their loves ones in nursing homes. That will be an important part of the future when we progress.

We should also learn lessons about hospital capacity. We were caught in terms of ICU and acute bed capacity because the recommendations made in 2009 on ICU and hospital capacity were not implemented. Let us make sure we never again get into the situation where we do not have enough ICU capacity. I know we never got to a stage where there were not enough beds but we sailed far too close to the wind in that regard.

Public health departments and specialists came front and centre, possibly for the first time in terms of how the public saw the work that they do. They do very important work. There are equal pay issues that need to be addressed, both for medical scientists and public health specialists. That is an important area.

On test and trace, we will have to look at a permanent unit that will examine how we respond to a pandemic. We are not out of the woods yet. This virus is still around but, hopefully, the vaccine will come on-stream and at some point we will be out of the woods. We may be presented in the future with a different type of virus that might be better or worse in terms of the impact it will have on society. We need to be prepared for that and learn all the lessons we most certainly have learned on the back of this pandemic. Truth be known, we are still learning.

On the Covid vaccine and the number of different trials, I share the Minister's enthusiasm but also his caution in that regard. There is a good deal of work to be done. The regulators have to certify the different formulas and types of vaccines being pursued. What has been presented is good news. The efficacy rates are very high, if the press releases are to be believed, but there is much work to be done. This will be the most ambitious vaccine ever distributed in the history of the State. We obtained 1.3 million doses of the influenza vaccine. This will be multiples of that, at least 3 million and possibly 4 million. It will raise distribution and administration issues. Are GPs and pharmacies equipped to be able to roll it as quickly as it will need to be rolled out? Do we need to consider pop-up centres, for example, across the State, as we did with testing? Do we need to train staff to make all of that happen? Those are the questions the high-level task force being put in place needs to deal with to make sure the infrastructure is in place because the Minister knows that, in all the current trials, most of the companies have already produced the vaccines. There are billions of doses across all of those companies so as soon as they are certified, it will be a case of giving the green light and it will be all systems go. We need to be prepared for that. I hope to debate that issue with the Minister in the time ahead.

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