Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Caithfidh mé a rá go bhfuil méadú tar éis teacht ar an méid leapacha atá againn agus go háirithe na leapacha ICU. Tá i bhfad níos mó díobh againn anois ná mar a bhí againn i dtosach na bliana seo caite agus níos mó leapacha i gcoitinne sna hospidéil chomh maith. Ta níos mó tástálacha ar siúl, ní hamháin antigen ach na cinn PCR freisin, suas 200%. There are four broad areas where we have to deal with this fourth wave. Overall, Ireland's performance so far in terms of the pandemic, on the key metric of mortality and in terms of protecting life and severe illness, stands up to most countries across Europe and the globe. We have been, relatively, in the better position consistently for quite some time because of measures that we have taken. That should be acknowledged.

I can inform the House that the booster campaign is well under way, with over 600,000 boosters having been already administered. This is on top of a record and highly effective overall vaccination roll-out programme in which we have close to 93% of the adult population fully vaccinated.

In terms of hospital beds, we have provided close to 1,000 extra beds overall in 2021, with more still to be provided. In the last year and a half to two years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of hospital beds. In terms of intensive care beds, we have gone from 225 to 300 within the system but we will have to go further in 2022, at a minimum to get to 340 intensive care beds. I would like to go beyond that. We have recruited close to 11,000 people throughout 2020 and 2021. The key issue now is not resources, because the Government has provided the resources for intensive care beds, hospital beds and additional staff, but the speed at which we can recruit and provide the entire capacity that an ICU bed requires. We have surge capacity to 350, if necessary.

The hospitals are under pressure because of a very transmissible variant, namely, the Delta variant. That is now manifesting itself in a fourth wave. Parallel with that has been the reopening of society. We have not had prolonged restrictions. We have reopened the economy and we have reopened society. Let us be honest, the increased socialisation that automatically follows that degree of reopening of almost all sectors of the economy in society leads to an increase in infections. This is a balance that we have to strike. Thousands of people have returned to work and that is good for those people in terms of their individual lives and so forth. The overarching objective of our policy in regard to Covid is to protect lives and to prevent severe illness. The motivating factor in terms of our responses now is to stop people getting Covid and to stop people getting sick and severely ill from Covid. There are a number of ways we can do that. It is through a combination of all of those ways that we do it.

In regard to the operation, I believe it should have gone ahead. There is enormous pressure on the Mater hospital. I set up that unit when I was for Minister for Health. We broke new ground in terms of heart and lung transplant. There was a big debate at the time as to whether we could pull that off in terms of the numbers of cases coming through the country. I took a decision at the time to do it and to fund it. It is a cause of great regret to me that a transplant did not go ahead. There is an internal inquiry or investigation going on within the Mater in that regard. Suffice to say, we will do everything we possibly can to protect lives and to protect people from getting very sick from Covid.

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