Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very happy to share with my colleague or any number of colleagues who wish to have time because I simply have not formulated my thoughts on this. It seems quite clear to me that there has been an increase in excess mortality rates but I have no idea why. Various reasons are posited, some conspiratorial and others not. Deputy Paul Murphy might not wish me to join him in anything but I join him in saying I have an open mind about the matter. We do need to find out what is behind the excess deaths.

I have just a couple of observations. There seems to be a worrying trend. Diagnoses of various cancers, in particular, were delayed as a result of Covid-19. With the benefit of hindsight, I believe it was probably inevitable. Hospitals were simply overcome treating people with Covid-19. The one thing I took from what was happening was that there was almost a hierarchy in that deaths from Covid-19 were almost regarded as more serious than those from anything else. That was a major worry of mine, but that is not in any way to take from the pain and suffering of families who lost people to Covid-19.

My mother was in a nursing home and, thankfully, died before Covid-19 arrived. In April 2019, she was quite ill with a flu that was doing the rounds.

A number of her fellow patients died at that time and a nurse said it was really sweeping through and had taken X number of them. I remember the figure. It was a relatively large proportion of the long-term patients. The nurse was sad about it and compassionate. The standard of nursing provided by this nurse and all the nurses in Raheen Community Hospital was excellent, as was the care provided by all the staff.

I was struck during the Covid-19 pandemic by how accepting we were that people die. It is inevitable that we die, especially at a certain age. However, if the same number of patients had died in Raheen Community Hospital in April 2020 as died from influenza in 2019, there would have been an RTÉ van outside and the matter would have been the subject of discussions in this House. That struck me as somewhat strange. We became incredibly focused on Covid-19 to the exclusion of everything else and that was problematic.

It also became apparent that everyone was saying we needed to follow the science. Unfortunately, science is not clear, particularly what cutting edge science indicates and does not, at any given time. It is now abundantly clear that the earth orbits the sun, but it is clear several hundred years after people nearly lost their lives for suggesting it was so. It was not clear at the time; it is now. Many things are not clear now.

It is concerning how much ideology influences scientific belief. It is wrong to suggest that scientists, any more than anyone else, can park all their views when they are arriving at a determination. No one can. We need to be aware of that in this House and society needs to be more aware of it. Everyone brings baggage with them and it informs how they view the world, how they do their jobs and all the decisions they make. People cannot park their ideologies, philosophies or what drove them to be scientists and to give their lives to science and suddenly say there is an objective right and wrong answer. I am not convinced they can.

I am, however, convinced that people are increasingly adamant about the correctness of their views and that their views are not in any way influenced by anything other than the truth. When social media first arrived, it was believed it would provide a kind of town hall forum for respectable debate, not only between neighbours and friends, but between people all over the world. Instead, it has led to people becoming incredibly trenchant in the expression of their views because they find them echoed. Sometimes it is enough for people to feel affirmed in their views if they are echoed once anywhere else in the world and they become increasingly trenchant. The discussion of excess mortality in social media is just one example. It was evident throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, on both sides of the debate. Concern has expressed by many about conspiracy theorists on one side, but there was plenty of abuse going around on all sides and from people with all viewpoints on how we as a society should respond to Covid-19.

I have taken enough time to say I have no idea what is causing this excess mortality but it needs to be investigated and that we must realise that those who investigate it probably do not have a monopoly on accuracy.

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