Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Aontú has been raising serious concerns over excess mortality for two years. There has been a prolonged period, month after month, where mortality figures have been far in excess of the normal in this State. We have been doing so through debates here, through parliamentary questions and in the media. It is deeply frustrating that the Government has not taken this issue seriously at all over the last two years.

At different points in the last two years, there has been clear evidence of excess mortality. If one talks to people in mortuaries, undertakers, priests and doctors, they will say that excess deaths have been peaking over and over again in the last two years. The Irish Examinercarried out a review of RIP.iefigures, which showed that over an eight-week period in the winter of last year, there was a 20% increase in mortality figures over the previous year. The previous year, in itself, comprised a Covid-19 death spike. That is an incredible situation. If one takes last year's spike in deaths and compare it with the pre-Covid-19 period, there was a difference of 3,000 extra deaths in a period of eight weeks over the pre-Covid years. These are incredible figures.

I have asked the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, in parliamentary question after parliamentary question going back two years, first, if he accepted that there were excess deaths; second, did he know what the cause of those excess deaths were; and third, what actions was he taking to ameliorate or fix the health issues that were so significant. In all of those questions, in fairness, the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, admitted to me that there was a significant level of estimated excess deaths. He pointed to the Eurostat figures of certain months being around 13% to 19% more than the average pre-Covid figure for excess deaths. For the last 12 months before this June, every month was up with regard to excess deaths.

The frustrating and shocking thing about this is that while the Covid-19 pandemic was going on, logically, excess deaths were front-page, prime-time and 9 o'clock news issues. Yet, when Covid-19 receded, the issue of excess deaths became completely invisible in political discourse and media scrutiny. I want to know why that is the situation. Why is it that the Government has, in general terms, admitted that there is a problem, has not made the effort to investigate why there is a problem, and has not really put in any resources to actually tackle the problem? Why is the Government being backwards in dealing with that particular issue?

It is incredible that I have asked the Taoiseach about this question, and he admitted that it was the case that there were excess deaths. He said he would go to the chief medical officer, CMO, to find out what the issue was, and he never came back to the Dáil with a response from the CMO. In a bizarre twist, a Gript journalist, just in the last ten days, asked the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, what he thought of the excess deaths and what he was doing about it. The Minister said that he did not know anything about excess deaths, even though he had answered three questions in the previous year admitting that there were significant excess deaths happening. There is something really strange in the way the Government has been dealing with this.

I understand that we live in a political system where there is a significant level of group and herd mentality, where political parties, especially the political establishment, tend to think as one, unfortunately, on a range of issues. This a little bit more, however, and the reason I think it is a little bit more is that the Government made significant decisions in the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic that had major consequences for people's health. The Government closed down significant elements of cancer services. This was a major mistake and I stated so over and over again in this Chamber. Some 480 people get cancer every day and 24 people die of cancer every day in this country. No public health system that is doing its job would close down the treatment for patients with cancer. I had skin in the game at the time. I got cancer in the middle of the Covid-19 situation as well, and I delayed my treatment significantly because we were told not to go to GPs, or not to stuff GPs or accident and emergency services up because of the issues around Covid-19. The current Tánaiste and the previous Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, ridiculed me for stating that the Government should not have been closing down cancer services at the time. It was quite an extraordinary response from the Government.

There are also the heart disease, stroke and mental health services. All of those treatments were reduced significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was not just Aontú that was pushing back against this. We had clinicians and senior medical professionals who said that the Government was making a mistake and that there would be a tsunami of far more advanced illnesses hitting the health system in the near future if the Government did not intervene. The Government kept sitting on its hands on this. It even closed down screening cancer services in this country.

I have done a good bit of work on Tusla figures in recent times and there has been a radical increase in the number of children who are being referred to Tusla, including 77,000 children last year and 83,000 this year. More than the number who sit the leaving certificate are referred to Tusla on an annual basis. I have spoken to people in the sector, and they have told me that a significant reason for this is that schools were closed down in the State for longer than practically any other European country. Critical services that help children in difficulty were closed down. Mental health services were closed down.

We have been calling for an investigation into what is happening with regard to excess deaths and what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic but the Government has refused to do it. The Government says that maybe there should be a review, it should not be public, that it should not be about pointing fingers or getting anybody into trouble. Yet, there are no concrete plans to carry out an investigation.

An investigation is critical for a number of reasons. First, we need to make sure that the mistakes that happened during the Covid-19 pandemic never happen again. We had a situation where nearly 10,000 older people were pushed out of hospitals and into nursing homes, many of them not even tested for Covid-19, seeding Covid-19 in these nursing homes - the areas most exposed to the illness in the country - and causing thousands of deaths. We need to make sure that never happens again.

We also need to make sure there is accountability in the system. There is no accountability. The reason why the Government is pushing back against an investigation into what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic is because the Government knows that it made major mistakes that led to large numbers of deaths in this country. If there is an investigation, it would have to take responsibility for that. As is the case with so much in this country, the State never wants to take responsibility for its actions. Any time there is an investigation or a tribunal, the Government is pulled kicking and screaming into a situation where there is an investigation.

We owe the people of this country a public investigation. We owe the people who lost their lives during the Covid-19 pandemic in the nursing homes, the ground zero of Covid-19, a public investigation. We also owe the people who are losing their lives today in the excess deaths figures a public investigation, to see why that is happening. We owe it to future generations to make sure that this will never be repeated. If this does not happen, we are going to see this crisis happen over and over again.

It is not just the Government that is pushing back against this.

There is practically silence from every other Opposition party in Leinster House. Most other Opposition parties were actually pushing the Government to do more through restrictions during the Covid pandemic. There was one political voice in the form of a political party, and that was Aontú, and it will call the Government out repeatedly over the wrongdoing related to Covid and the refusal to investigate to ensure we can save lives in the future.

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