Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The difficulty is that we are experiencing an avalanche of these cases. Somewhere between one in ten and one in five people who have Covid end up with long Covid. They are presenting at GPs' surgeries at the moment but there is no referral pathway in place for the majority of them. We are looking at a minimum of 145,000 people added on top of the 1,610 people already within hospitals suffering acute Covid today.

In the numerous responses that I have received from the HSE, it has stated that it will build on the existing level of service provision. Anyone who has suffered from myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, will tell you that the services are not there at the moment, so we will be building on dangerous foundations.

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