Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Mattie McGrath.

As a member of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Response, I take this opportunity to thank the Chairman, Deputy McNamara. He put a huge amount of time and effort into his role and was a very fair Chairman throughout the whole period during which the committee met. I thank the leader of the Rural Independent Group, Deputy Mattie McGrath, for allowing me to be part of the committee. We worked very hard and diligently and the Minister was part of that during the early stages of the Covid crisis.

I do not have time to discuss all the many issues that arose in the course of the committee's discussions. Instead, I will refer to a few specific areas in which the State definitely failed in its response, at the cost of causing great difficulties for many people and, indeed, at the cost of lives lost. Testing was an issue on which we had a great deal of discussion. I made the case that it did not make sense for the Government to be sending swabs to Germany - even to the extent of purchasing a PC-12 aeroplane, at a cost of more than €5 million, to transport them - when laboratories in Ireland were willing to do the testing. A tiny bit of investment would have enabled them to do so. There was one company in Bandon in west Cork that needed only to make small improvements for a tiny investment, but there was no interest in that. It was all about looking elsewhere and what was happening in Germany was fierce dramatic at the time. We also discussed rapid testing at airports and I tried to persuade the then Taoiseach that this was the way to go. When I raised the matter on Leaders' Questions, he refused to consider it, which was the same response I got from some of the airports. Now we are told it is the most important thing we have to put in place.

We talked about nursing homes and community hospitals. There was a lot of pointing of fingers at everybody else when the real culprit was, in fact, the State. In the community hospital in Clonakilty in west Cork, a lot of people died from Covid. That is not down to anything the staff did wrong. They were failed by the State in that the hospital was not brought up to HIQA standards. Year after year, when the deadline came up to improve the standards, successive Ministers chose to extend the deadline. This failure to act cost people their lives. We still have cases today where people are unable to get access to community hospitals because the bed numbers have been reduced.

We need to move on and look at other issues that are being severely affected by the Covid crisis. One of those issues is access to medicinal cannabis. I am disappointed that the Minister for Health is no longer in the Chamber to hear what I am saying about this. I spoke recently to Vera Twomey, who has been a great activist on this issue on behalf of her daughter, Ava. There is talk now of access to the drug being suspended. I ask the Minister of State to look into this issue. There are a number of families who are affected by it. In fairness to the Taoiseach, he has put a lot of effort into dealing with it. I ask that the Minister of State at least return Ms Twomey's calls and try to resolve her difficulties.

The cross-border health directive is another issue I would like to discuss. Unfortunately, I am almost out of time. A lot of people awaiting cataract operations are in danger of going blind. The Minister needs to come into the Dáil and tell us whether that scheme is going to continue.

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