Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We, Donegal people, often call our home county the forgotten county. It has no rail service, poor public transport, poor or non-existent broadband infrastructure and it has experienced years of under-investment and neglect from this and previous Governments.

Last week, finally, there was a good news story with the launch of the Donegal Place initiative. Donegal was to be positioned as a great place to live, work, invest, explore and study. Those of us from Donegal and those who have travelled there already know this. Instead of this positive news story being shared over the weekend, Donegal was highlighted as the worst county in class for its continuing high rates of Covid-19. Figures from the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, showed that Donegal had the highest incidence rate of Covid-19 in the country, at 293.4, compared to a national 14-day incidence rate of 127.3. The highest rates of infections were in Milford and Letterkenny, whereas infections in the south of the county were very low, around three times lower than the national average.

On Saturday, 1 May, there was much media fanfare around the online meeting between the Minister of Health, Stephen Donnelly, the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, and public representatives from Donegal. Having attended the hour and a half meeting, I can say that it was little but a public relations exercise. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, was supposed to be on Highland Radio yesterday morning on the "Nine til Noon Show" with Greg Hughes to outline what was being done in regard to the Covid-19 outbreaks. I listened to the show and was not surprised to hear that it was just local representatives again.

During the meeting on Saturday there were discussions about the possibility of increasing the number of walk-in test centres and the need to put testing centres in Milford or Glenties, for example, so that people could access them. I welcome the eventual announcement that as part of the enhanced response a self-referral testing centre will be opening in Milford Mart today, but it will only be open for three days. Additional facilities are to be announced, but we do not know where they will be located or for how long they will be open.

Since the start of the pandemic, I have been asking about access to test centres and vaccines for people in Donegal. I have been calling for an all-island zero-Covid approach, something which I raised with the Taoiseach in January of this year because of the issues around having differing regulations and regimes on both sides of the Border.

One of the initiatives announced yesterday, which did not come out of the PR-stunt last Saturday, was that the Garda had set up a hotline - a tout line or a rat line - through which neighbours are asked to tout on neighbours. On what planet is this Government if that is its response and that of officialdom in regard to the Covid outbreak in Donegal? We need walk-in test centres and vaccination clinics in Donegal and an extension of them for more than one week to ensure people can get tested and not a hotline through which people are being encouraged to inform on their friends and neighbours in respect of breaches of the Covid-19 restrictions. That is crazy. It will do nothing but set back the response in the county. What does the Government propose to do to ensure there is a proper roll-out of services?

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