Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

As we all know, the situation in the hospitals is on a knife-edge. We also know that we have currently got exceptionally high daily case numbers. It is very important that there is a recognition of the reason we have got to this point. There has to be a recognition that many of the decisions that were taken in the lead-up to Christmas were high-risk decisions that have put the country at serious risk because unless we do that, we will not learn from those mistakes.

We had a situation where the Government was claiming in Christmas week that the reason things were so bad was as a result of the new UK variant. That simply was not the case. NPHET, the Chief Medical Officer and, in the last couple of days, the WHO have told us that. The Minister will not be able to bring the public with him unless he is absolutely frank and candid. I ask him to please learn from those mistakes.

We were also told about a meaningful Christmas in spite of the fact that we knew that at the point of early December when level 5 restrictions were being lifted the numbers were dangerously high. The whole purpose of level 5 was to bring the numbers down to between 50 and 100 cases per day. At the point when the level 5 restrictions were lifted, we had an average of 330 cases per day in that first week in December. By 18 December, when the decision was taken to resume household visits, we had case numbers of 582 cases per day. Decisions have to based on the reality of the situation and the science. Wishful thinking about Christmas has done a lot of damage and we are paying a very high price for that.

I also believe a mistake was made in talking up the vaccines. It is fantastic that there are vaccines now. It is a wonderful breakthrough but the reality is that the Minister and other Government representatives spent a lot of time in December talking up the vaccines. That, combined with the talk of a meaningful Christmas and the lifting of the restrictions, certainly gave people a false sense of security. I repeat that we are now paying an exceptionally high price for that.

The figures seem to be plateauing somewhat even though they are still extremely high but we have to remember that the impact of the new variants is only starting to come through in the daily figures. There is no guarantee that we will continue on the downward trajectory of the daily case numbers. Rather than talking about restrictions for five weeks, a month or whatever, the target should be a fixed number of daily cases. We should have restrictions until we reach what is regarded as a safe number of daily cases. I ask the Minister to please consider taking that approach rather than a particular point in time.

I have a number of serious concerns in respect of the vaccines. We have no delivery forecast even though we were told that the EU had got a delivery forecast for the Pfizer vaccine last week. Can the Minister share that with us? There is a need to be absolutely transparent in respect of the roll-out of vaccines. There is a lot of concern that there is some queue-jumping going on. What exactly is the position with regard to GPs? What exactly is the position with regard to practice nurses? All of these matters need to be clarified. For example, who are the staff that will roll out the vaccines when we are into big numbers? What about the registration system? How do people go about registering? Has the IT system been sorted out yet? These are critical issues and the Minister needs to be upfront and clear with people to encourage confidence in the system but when there is vagueness in that regard, it causes concern.

One of the biggest gaps in the response to Covid-19 has been in respect of international travel. At no point have we been serious about having proper monitoring and oversight of restrictions. The latest announcement is that travellers coming into this country from every other country will be required to have had a polymerase chain reaction, PCR, test prior to travel. That is not enough. Will the Minister please stop telling people that that is sufficient? The public health advice is that one must have two PCR tests at least five days apart to give an assurance that a person is not infectious. I ask the Minister to clarify that and to stop giving out inaccurate information.

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