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

After 12 weeks of severe level 5 lockdown, the daily Covid-19 case numbers remain stubbornly high. Leaving aside the kite-flying that has been entirely unhelpful in recent weeks, the question for the Government is what exact steps it will take to address this problem to drive down numbers and allow some level of opening society and the economy.

The vast majority of people have severely restricted their movements and lives in what can only be described as a major national effort to limit the spread of the virus. However, increasingly, there is a sense that the Government has not played its part or done as it promised.

I will raise a number of key actions required and actions promised by Government. I seek the Tánaiste's response and the reasons for the Government's inaction across these various areas. First, why has the Government not addressed the long-standing issues with the under-resourcing of public health doctors? Every time I have raised this over the past 15 months, there have been promises but the matter remains unresolved. Public health doctors are critical in a pandemic. It is indefensible that this has not been resolved. Related to this is the lack of retrospective tracing to establish where exactly transmission is taking place. It is a basic thing and it beggars belief that it is not being done.

The issue of travel is arguably the biggest failure in the response to Covid. People have been instructed that they must only travel for essential reasons yet, inexplicably, the Government has stopped asking international travellers about this since 7 February. That week, 46% of people were travelling for non-essential reasons. Since then, we have no idea why people are travelling. On so-called home quarantining, the gardaí have only just established pilot projects in six divisions for enforcement purposes. Mandatory hotel quarantining was finally introduced this week. Who exactly is responsible for security? Is it the hotels, the security companies, the gardaí or the Defence Forces?

On vaccinations, when will the Government publish the detailed plan for the mass vaccination programme? What is the revised vaccination target for the end of the first quarter this year?

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