Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This legislation is necessary given the way the disease is unfolding. Having reflected on some of the discussions and debate around the Bill, I fear that travel is being presented as some sort of totemic issue in the belief that many of the answers to the challenge we face with Covid lie in banning and restricting incoming travel. That is not the case. There are many other challenges. We will be coming back to this legislation because there will be difficulties with implementing it. Difficult cases will arise over the coming weeks. For this reason, the legislation needs to be flexible in order to deal with the various demands of travel. We have to redouble our efforts to finding an all-island solution to this problem. This legislation will not be effective, whereas some sort of all-island policy on quarantine and testing could be agreed. We need to dedicate ourselves to achieving that.

People are in a very dark place. The last number of weeks have been difficult for everyone, as the Minister knows. I welcome the extra resources allocated to the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for mental health services. It is important that those resources are spent and made available in communities around the country. I commend the Minister of State on her approach to the roll-out of the vaccination programme in nursing homes. That has been effective and has provided great assurance, not just to the residents but also to their families and nursing home staff. We are much further on than we were at the beginning of this process. I commend the Minister of State on that effort and I ask her to bring that same focus and effort to the roll-out of mental health supports to communities across the country in the context of Covid.

As I said, there are other issues that will also need to be reinforced and addressed again in our battle with Covid. I welcome the changes in the vaccination programme the Minister announced last night, which will see people with certain conditions moved up the list. I note again the role of family carers. I accept that if somebody moves up the queue, someone else must move down. However, the role of family carers in guarding against illness and doing unrecognised work to protect the health service needs to be reflected in the vaccine roll-out.

I also raise with the Minister the vaccine centres. County Mayo, the third largest county in the country, has only one such centre.

There needs to be a greater roll-out and greater availability of vaccine at the centre in Erris, which, unfortunately, has suffered so much Covid-related trauma in the past number of months, and also in Ballina and in east Mayo. There continues to be difficulties around the logistics of the delivery of vaccines, even for the over 85 cohort in which we are so progressed at this stage. GPs are still contacting me saying it is impossible to get information as to when they will get their schedule, which is due to be delivered by Friday week. There are lessons to be learned from the past three weeks in terms of that roll-out for the bigger roll-out. I hope that the Department takes the chance to roll those out and to work with the various supply chains so that they are resolved and that information is given.

Huge store is being placed on the vaccination programme and we all wish it success. However, it must work on the basis of building confidence, which, in fairness, has been done so far. We need to build confidence also in the logistics.

I ask people commenting on this Bill not to make something out of it that may not be in it in terms of its input.

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