Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I have received some incredible answers from different Ministers to parliamentary questions in respect of what happened during Covid. The Minister for Health confirmed to me that there were 10% fewer cancers diagnosed in 2020 than would have been expected for that year by the National Cancer Registry Ireland. That is an alarming revelation. In 2020, 60,000 fewer women were screened by CervicalCheck than were screened in the previous year. This is because the Government in part shut down cancer screening. There were 30% fewer women diagnosed with cancer of the cervix in 2020 compared with 2019.

Aontú was the only political party in the Dáil at the time pushing back against the policy of the Government to reduce cancer services. During that time, Ireland was the only country in the whole of Europe to shut down the building of homes. In terms of child experiences in this country, there has been an enormous spike in the number of children who have been referred to the likes of Tusla and to State care in the past couple of years. People within that sector have told me there is absolutely no doubt that the actions taken by the Government in the context of how children were treated during Covid have left children in a very precarious situation.

Any time the Government refers to its review or investigation into the Covid time, the first thing it talks about is the need to avoid a blame game. It sounds like the Government is using language of trying to prevent accountability in that regard. We need a proper open public investigation into the decisions that were made and the outcomes they had on people. People suffered significantly from many of the decisions, some of which were not based on science relating to protection of people.

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