Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. On critical care and ICUs, she is absolutely correct. The hospital system is under severe pressure. It will get worse before it gets better. We know it will get better because we are beginning to see the effect of the measures in place. We are beginning to see the cases go down but it is essential we maintain that at a tight level so that they go down as fast as possible. That is how we will help our healthcare workers the most.

Regarding the numbers in critical care, there were 255 critical care beds at the start of last year. That was brought up to 285 beds. They are not all being used but there are now approximately 305 critical care beds available and that can be scaled up to 350. As the Deputy said, we have an arrangement in place with the private hospitals where we can access their beds and their critical care units as well. A large number of nurses have had additional training in critical care. The HSE has done a lot of work to make sure it is in a good place regarding many of the real concerns we were all looking at carefully in the first wave, for example, around ventilators and PPE. The HSE now retains a three-month stock of oxygen and so forth.

The Deputy asked about healthcare workers and close contacts. There is a derogation in place, which the HSE uses sparingly. The derogation is that if somebody is non-symptomatic but is deemed a close contact, he or she can have a PCR test. If he or she tests negative and if it is deemed appropriate, he or she can come into work under the supervision of occupational health, in an appropriate way, in the hospital setting. That is the only place in which it is used.

Childcare for healthcare workers is something I am pushing hard on. There has been progress and I would like to see more progress. Preschool childcare is available for essential workers, including healthcare workers. I am working with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, on what more can be done for primary school children, which would help with a lot of those needing childcare. Then there is the remaining question of secondary school children. As the Deputy quite rightly says, there are many households in which there are two essential workers. They might be healthcare workers, gardaí or other essential workers. Their children are at home during the day and it can be really hard to find childcare. Even if childcare can be found, it can be really expensive. That is a real problem.

I spoke with the HSE about this just a few hours ago and the Deputy's figure of 7,000 is exactly right. The HSE's estimate from the first wave of the number of people who would be quite stuck was 7,000. I am working with the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, at a Government level and we are working with the HSE. The HSE is putting in place flexibility wherever it can to facilitate it. The Deputy has explained it really well in asking if this will push some couples and households to a level which is incredibly hard. It will do so because we are seeing in some cases that healthcare workers are doing shifts and their partners then do another shift while they mind the kids. It is a really tough time for them and we have to do everything we can to facilitate them, particularly the households that might have a lone parent or where both parents are essential workers, be they healthcare workers or other essential workers. One of the additions that is worth mentioning is that households with essential workers in them can pair with another household outside of their bubble, specifically for the provision of childcare. That will not solve the problem for everybody so we have to keep working on it but it will help to some extent.

The Deputy asked how we can scale up the vaccination programme. We all hope that we get a vast number of vaccines into the country. We are watching AstraZeneca particularly carefully, for example. We can scale it up with the vaccination programmes we have, with the thousands of vaccinators who are trained up and in addition to that, with the GPs. There are thousands of GPs and many practice nurses, not to mention the pharmacies. We must create an army of vaccinators all across the country and I mention the vaccination centres as well. The real advantage of the pharmacists and GPs and of their staff is that they are in every town and many villages across the country.

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