Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Throughout this crisis - I said this in opposition and I say it now as a member of the Government - we have done it correctly in the context of sharing information.

The letter from NPHET, modelling information and access to public health officials to be able to answer whatever questions on modelling or any other aspect of its advice are critical and will happen. That is needed.

It is complex. Modelling is based on assumptions. It is not a certain science. As the Deputy said, the modelling possibilities range from there being no Delta variant by the end of September resulting in 55 possible cases ICU to the most pessimistic scenario. In that instance, the modelling is pessimistic in terms of the transmissibility of the Delta virus. It examines how similar we would be to last summer in terms of modelling what happened when we reopened hospitality and taking the most negative prognosis on that. As the Deputy said, the analysis in that most pessimistic scenario foresees 1,685 people in ICU.

The approach on this is not, on this occasion, to look at the case numbers. The circumstances have changed between this year and last. The number of people who will get into severe health difficulties or, God help us, die because of Covid will be a tiny fraction of what it would have been previously because most of our older people have been vaccinated. NPHET said - it could be right but it is not certain - that if we had the sort of case numbers its modelling tells it is possible, we would have those sorts of numbers in ICU. In those circumstances, our hospital system would be in trouble again. That is what we need to prevent. I believe we can prevent it.

The key way of preventing that is to get the 370,000 AstraZeneca vaccines which are arriving today to people aged in their 60s and those who have acute medical or other conditions who received a first AstraZeneca dose and are waiting for a second. We will have all of them done by 19 July, and that is of critical importance. Not only that, the rules will be changed to allow younger people to use the 100,000 surplus AstraZeneca vaccines that will be available after those aged 60 years and older have been vaccinated. We will also shorten the gap to four weeks between the first and second such AstraZeneca dose.

There were not just decisions around hospitality made yesterday. A number of decisions were made and advice was given which allows us to address the health crisis aspect of this. I believe we will not see another wave. Rather, we will have learned from last summer and will have more of an outer summer and open hospitality and other sectors this summer. I fully understand the critical importance of that for our communities and small family businesses and social life. We will do it in a safe way, which is thought through. We are thinking today about health advice so that we put a proper plan in place to be able to do that without creating a health risk.

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