Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to the "RTÉ Investigates" programme last evening, which revealed the extraordinary work of front-line healthcare workers in protecting our people and achieving incredible outcomes for a significant number of patients whom we saw on the programme. Unfortunately, a number of those patients passed on, which was very traumatic for the staff and all those who work in the hospital. It underpins the importance of all of us sticking to the guidelines and adhering to regulations in order to get down case numbers and reduce significantly the pressure on front-line healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing homes. It is a critical effort to get those numbers down and relieve the pressure we saw in last evening's programme.

The programme also illustrated the fillip and morale boost that the vaccination programme provides to staff and front-line healthcare workers in the hospital. The phrase was used that it provided "hope" with an "end in sight" and there was a great buzz around the place when the vaccinations were taking place. More generally, we must say that the only issue impeding vaccinations so far has been the supply from the manufacturers. We are administering vaccines as we get them.

The two priority groupings have been front-line healthcare workers and residents and staff in nursing homes. That is the truth of it. That is what has happened. In many respects, the personnel, all of the clinicians, everybody working in nursing and all of the staff who appeared last evening represent the HSE. From a policy perspective, when the Government did the budget this year, we increased overall resources by about €4 billion. Some €600 million was put in before the budget for a winter initiative, which has yielded results in terms of the flow through hospitals outside of Covid. As I said earlier, 7,000 additional staff have been recruited to the health service and many more will be recruited during the course of 2021. Coming out of Covid, one of the key lessons is that there will have to be significantly higher investment in our health service. The challenge now is to embed the increased levels of investment that we have experienced during Covid, while identifying and evaluating what works, and to make sure that this stays in the base of our health service funding into the future. However, it must be coupled with reform as well.

The idea of a national Health Service Executive has come into its own in the context of the pandemic. A single national entity that could, for example, resource PPE and administer it, operationalise a vaccination programme and deal, in a national context, with countering the global pandemic, has been an important point that we should register and acknowledge, despite all of the criticisms. The outcomes in our hospitals are on a par with if not better than the outcomes in the other European health systems. It is time to acknowledge that, too. While acknowledging criticism and limitations, there are quite a significant number of positives emanating from the performance of our hospitals and acute services, and of the HSE, in the context of a once-in-100-year global pandemic.

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