Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I too would like to thank the Chairman and members of the committee for all of their work and allowing me to speak at some of the meetings. It was important for me to do this, particularly at a time Kildare was the only county in lockdown so that I could share the experience of my constituents. Covid-19 has turned our world upside down. We watched as strange situations like not being able to hold our loved ones or shake hands became the new normal. My hope is that we will never consider changes like this in any way normal.

A positive from the pandemic is an increase in the number of people who are walking and cycling in our communities. We need to do all we can to ensure that this becomes the new normal and keep the momentum going so that those who can leave their cars behind for short journeys are encouraged to do so.

I pay tribute to the front-line workers who kept everything going, especially in the dark days of the early summer when no end to this crisis was in sight. This crisis has shown us the importance to our society of not only doctors and nurses, but retail workers and the entertainment and events industry that kept us entertained on social media, in particular during the initial lockdown.

Our older people were disproportionately affected by this pandemic, especially those living in nursing homes. I echo the first recommendation of the committee's report, namely, that a public inquiry be established to investigate and report on all circumstances relating to the individual deaths of Covid-19 patients in nursing homes.

We need to ensure that we learn from the past. We also need to reduce our over-reliance on private nursing homes by ensuring more public nursing homes are developed, as alluded to in the second recommendation in the report. When announcing changes in restrictions,s we must also consider mental as well as physical health, in particular for older people. They were told to cocoon. For some reason, they felt that they had been promptly forgotten about by the Government.

I urge the Government to pull out all the stops to ensure this Christmas is as normal as possible under the circumstances. Nobody does Christmas like Ireland, and we need to ensure that this special family time is preserved and everyone is given an opportunity to join in and enjoy it safely.

See this speech in context