Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

On several occasions during the pandemic, our health service was threatened with being overwhelmed. Ministers argued that this was due to the power of the virus, but this was only partly true. It was also down to the weakness of our public health service infrastructure. There were not enough beds, including ICU beds, and there were not enough staff. We got through it thanks to the heroic efforts of the health staff but we were also lucky. The result of this was that society was locked down for considerably longer than would otherwise have been necessary. Another result is that the Government ended up paying money to private hospitals for bed capacity, amounting to €115 million at the pinch points. I put it to the Taoiseach that, if we are to learn the lessons of the pandemic to date, two key changes need to be made. The first is that the public health service needs to be significantly expanded, with particular attention paid to bed capacity, ICU capacity and staffing levels. We also need a single-tier public health service. We need to nationalise private hospitals and integrate them into a fully public health system.

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