Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Information given to Aontú by the HSE shows that well over 40% of Covid-19 deaths in Ireland are linked to hospital or nursing home outbreaks. That is 3,500 people who died because they contracted Covid-19 in a nursing home or hospital. For example, these are people who went into hospital with a broken leg and came out in a coffin.

It is a human disaster of enormous proportions and, incredibly, the people who were most vulnerable during the Covid crisis were actually the people who were most exposed. Throughout Covid the Government was focused on restricting people to 2 km from their homes, preventing people from going to funerals, to school and to work, when in reality the most dangerous place one could be was in a nursing home or in a hospital, the two locations run or regulated by the State. We accept that no Government could get everything right but there were serious and disastrous mistakes made during Covid.

Documents released to Aontú by the National Treatment Purchase Fund show that 10,000 people were discharged from hospitals into nursing homes at the start of Covid. Many of those who were discharged were not tested for Covid. This had the effect of seeding those nursing homes with Covid. Staffing was chaotic in those nursing homes. Indeed, the current Minister for Health, when he was an Opposition Deputy at the time, stated in this Chamber that the HSE was intercepting staff and PPE from going into nursing homes. The head of Nursing Homes Ireland actually tried to get a meeting with then Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, to draw attention to this crisis but none was forthcoming for weeks. Nursing homes were so short staffed that they were phoning relatives and asking for help. Nursing homes were going onto Facebook looking for help. In one case I recall a nursing home manager went on the radio in tears to discuss how two staff were left in charge for 48 hours in a nursing home when five people died around them. They could not get the necessary staff to help them out. The Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler, wrote to the HSE head, Mr. Paul Reid, as did Mr. Phelim Quinn, then chief executive officer of HIQA, urging for more staff. There was no reply for weeks, but finally Mr. Paul Reid wrote back saying that everything was fine and that there was no pressure. Shockingly, at the time, the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, created the Be on Call for Ireland initiative where 73,000 people signed up including medics and nurses who came home from abroad to do their civic duty for this country. How many people were ever recruited from that? It was around 450 people. Only 10% of that database of people were ever contacted by this Government, which is a tiny fraction.

The Government is now saying that it is carrying out a review. Is the Taoiseach for real? Is the Taoiseach saying that the deaths of 3,500 people only warrants a review? Why does the Government oppose a public investigation that would find out the truth and provide justice for families who have lost loved ones so tragically in the Covid crisis?

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