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

I think we will all agree our healthcare workers have done an amazing job throughout the pandemic so far. We can be very proud of our public health service. It is much maligned and has its imperfections, but the pandemic has proved to us that it is much better than many people believed it was, and it really stood up and scaled up in the way we asked it to during the pandemic. While all public servants, including healthcare workers, have received modest pay increases over the course of the pandemic, I do not think they are adequate to recognise the value of the work that was carried out during the pandemic, and I know the Deputy will agree with that too.

The Government wants to recognise the work that was done in a special way. That could be done through a financial bonus or additional leave taken over a number of years, but there are complications and factors we need to take into account. First, the pandemic is not over yet - I guarantee that - and that will become apparent to people over the next couple of weeks. It is not just healthcare workers who have put their shoulders to the wheel when it comes to the pandemic. Many other public servants have too, in the Department of Social Protection, Revenue, my Department - ensuring that businesses got the grants they needed - the private sector in areas such as retail, transport and GPs, for example, as well as the many volunteers I have met during my shifts at the vaccination centres, and they need to be recognised too. It would be a mistake not to look at this in the round, and that is what we need to do.

Even among healthcare workers, there has been significant variation, with some people having to do twice the work they would normally have done, some being redeployed and others actually having reduced workloads because their service was shut down or suspended through no fault of their own. This is not straightforward. It is something we are going to have to work out and negotiate, and it is going to have to be fair and be funded.

As this might be my last opportunity to talk about Covid in the Chamber before the recess, there are a few things I would like to say. First, the pandemic is not over. We are entering a new phase of the pandemic. We have vaccines now, which has weakened the connection between cases and hospitalisations and deaths but has not broken it, and we have a virus that is more infections than ever before. At the start of the pandemic, older people were the most vulnerable. We asked them to stay at home and that saved lives and prevented much illness, but things have changed.

Now unvaccinated people, that is, people who have not been fully vaccinated, are the most vulnerable. Over the course of the next few weeks, people who have not been fully vaccinated are at greater risk than ever before because this virus is so transmissible. Two hundred people have been in ICU in the past two months, 199 of whom had not been fully vaccinated. We are seeing a major surge in cases, almost entirely among younger people and people who have not been fully vaccinated, and we as a Government and a Parliament have a responsibility now to protect those who have not been fully vaccinated. I ask them over the summer, at least until they have been fully vaccinated, to please avoid socialising indoors, please keep their social contacts to a minimum, please avoid non-essential foreign travel and please wear a mask, even outdoors, in crowded scenarios. People who are unvaccinated are more at risk over the next few weeks than at any point during this pandemic. It is not over.

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