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

In terms of HEPA filtrators and ventilation, guidance has been issued to schools and an expert group was formed. The fundamental view of that group, by the way, is that the most important ventilation is fresh air. That is the most basic rule of thumb it has applied. On the costings, people have magically come up with a figure of €12 million. I have been given an estimate that it could cost up to €80 million if every single classroom were to be ventilated with a HEPA filter. Again, that can be worked through. What cannot be argued with is that hundreds of millions have been allocated to our education system for Covid preparedness. The fact there are up to 35,000 CO2 monitors in schools throughout the country, in almost all classrooms, has been very important. I have touched base with some schools in this respect and they have found it very useful in terms of managing their way through this. In respect of air filtration in schools, there is a facility there to avail of that, working with departmental technical people who will advise schools that are in difficulty in regard to ventilation and help them to put in ventilation systems. That facility is there and there is also the minor capital works programme and so on. There is a sufficiency of capital there for people to have bespoke solutions for their particular school, because every school is different.

The most important advice to give to schools and preschool settings is that where children are symptomatic, they should not be sent to school. That is the most fundamental advice. As I keep on saying, one of the biggest issues for the past three months has been respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, in terms of children getting ill and being hospitalised. RSV and other respiratory illnesses have been the dominant issue this winter among children, which has proved challenging. The symptomatic advice applies across the board and will be very helpful. Someone said earlier that parents were sending children in with a spoonful or two of Calpol. That is not the thing to do.

Antigen testing has been introduced and 8,000 tests were dispatched. I take Deputy Kelly's point and will follow up and reflect on it. The target now is to get to the Christmas break, recalibrate and review how we deal with the next semester. The advice we have received this week from the public health doctors is that they believe children should reduce their socialising. Why? They showed us graphs yesterday, which they published, showing that infections among five- to 11-year-olds are going through the roof in terms of numbers, or had been for the past number of weeks, as well as among their parents. They are the two big bars in the graph showing where the numbers have gone up. They want to bring that level down, just like we did in the rest of the population. Two weeks ago, our pubic messaging worked in terms of making a statement asking people to follow the advice on working from home and our exhortations to people to reduce their socialising. That has led to a moderation and stabilisation of hospital and ICU numbers, but we are still at too high a level of incidence. The same advice now is being applied to children from the public health doctors, namely, that if we can reduce socialising overall, we could turn that curve the other way, which is down, in terms of those case numbers.

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