Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Today, I received information that from last June to this February 2,600 people caught Covid in hospital settings in the State. Given that is roughly half the length of time of the illness the real figure is way higher than this. It is an incredible situation because hospitals should be the location of cure and protection but in reality for many people they were the place where they caught this deadly virus. I know many families who had loved ones who went into hospital for non-Covid reasons, caught the virus and died. While there is no doubt that hospitals did their best in many cases to keep out the illness there are serious examples of mismanagement also.

The biggest issue I have, and perhaps the Taoiseach will answer this, is that staff were asked to work in a seriously understaffed manner. We had Be on call for Ireland, to which 70,000 people signed up, and this time last year only 54 of them had been employed. At the start of this year, there were still 700 people who had the right qualifications and were ready to go into the health service to help but they were not employed. We know that in January and February, hospitals were grossly understaffed and under pressure.

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