Michael Lowry (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This week I spoke with a community nurse manager who works for a private company contracted to care for HSE patients. She co-ordinates a large team of nurses and carers. The professional services they provide make it possible for elderly and often terminally ill patients to remain in their homes rather than being admitted to hospital or to a nursing home. These community-based workers carry out their work alone, without the assistance of other professionals. Not only do they care for patients, but they also provide support and guidance to family members. Their work is invaluable but these highly committed workers feel totally abandoned. The nature of their everyday work takes them from house to house. Increasingly they are faced with cases of Covid-19. Numerous times each day nurses and carers have to put on PPE gear in their cars or in house porches. It has become impossible for them to get back-up support from other medical services. If a housebound patient displays Covid-19 symptoms and requires a test, it can take up to seven days for paramedics to arrive to carry out that test. Family members are instantly quarantined in the house or forbidden to enter if they live elsewhere, yet the community nurses and carers must continue to visit, provide care to the patient and support their families. As it stands, these private-company nurses and carers have not been notified of when they will be vaccinated and neither have the hundreds of family carers in every county across the country. These are front-line workers in every sense, except when it comes to vaccination. Community healthcare would collapse without these people and they must be protected as a matter of urgency. Older people living at home are terrified. They have heard nothing from their doctors about when they will be vaccinated. Family carers and those who provide home help feel forgotten. Residents in sheltered housing at Sue Ryder House in Holycross and Nenagh remain vulnerable. It is imperative that these people be given the same level of priority as those living in nursing homes.

To counteract this destructive virus, which has caused havoc, we need a deliberate, calculated and co-ordinated plan to vaccinate as much of the population as possible in the shortest possible timeframe. This is the most urgent and crucial task to be undertaken since the foundation of the State. It is a major project but the roll-out of the vaccine lacks scale and ambition. We are in the midst of a national crisis or emergency which is having a disastrous effect on our society and economy. Restrictions and lockdowns give only temporary relief. The policy of suppressing and containing the virus has failed in Ireland and across Europe. We need to break the cycle of opening and closing and the only lasting solution is inoculation. However, there are already serious doubts and reservations about our vaccine roll-out programme. Many people are concerned that the vaccine programme is sluggish. While we can now be more confident about vaccine supply, big questions remain around the number of vaccinators available. The projected time it will take to vaccinate 70% of the population is deeply disturbing to many people.

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