Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy made some very good points. However, while Denmark has had a very good response to the pandemic and is one of the few countries in Europe, or the world, with a lower mortality rate than us, we would not follow Slovakia's or Hungary's response to the pandemic because their mortality rates, sadly, are among the highest in the European Union.

Deputy Shanahan is spot on in relation to e-health. A lack of an individual health identifier is a real deficiency in our health service. We have a really good PPS system and public service card which, for many reasons, have not been extended or replicated for health. One of the outcomes or dividends from this pandemic must be universal patient registration with a health ID for everyone so that we can do vaccination programmes and screening programmes much better and identify people through disease registers and so on. What the Deputy said in relation to that was spot on and will have to be part of the legacy of and dividend from this pandemic.

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