Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and wish her the best of luck with her brief.

"I never cry and I have spent all day crying."Those are the words of Patricia McGowan, owner of the Nightingale Nursing Home in my parish of Ahascragh who is contending with the awful situation of 26 of the 28 residents testing positive for Covid-19 and who feels abandoned by the HSE. Senator Joe O'Reilly mentioned this morning in his contribution this tragic and upsetting situation. Since all but three staff tested positive on Tuesday night, only one nurse and two care assistants were available to care for the 27 residents of the nursing home. We are back in a dreadful place with this morning's news about that nursing home, and I wish to call for the immediate reconvening of the Oireachtas Special Committee on Covid-19 Response and for the Government to treat this issue as the national emergency that it is and to do finally what should have been done more than six months ago, which is to make the residents of nursing homes and other residential settings its top priority in the fight against Covid-19.

As far back as April and May, I and other Members of this House and the Dáil went to great lengths in trying to get the Government to take the issue of Covid in nursing homes seriously. The word "abandoned" was justifiably used at the time to describe the Government's response regarding its failure to protect the lives of residents of nursing homes during the first wave. Six months on from that, it is beyond devastating to hear the owner of the nursing home at the centre of today's story reported in the Irish Independentas saying that she feels "totally abandoned" by the State as she comes to terms with trying to save the lives of residents under her care.

It is highly regrettable that some members of the Government parties back in April and May sought to scapegoat individual nursing homes for the deaths of residents rather than accepting that it was, first and foremost, a responsibility of Government to do whatever was needed to safeguard the lives of older people and those most at risk. That is what the national effort was supposed to be all about. On one occasion, I heard the then Minister for Health point out gently that these were privately owned nursing homes in many cases, as though that mattered. The reality is the same if there are old and vulnerable persons being cared for, whether with a State subvention or not. There is a responsibility in a crisis to ensure that everything is done to protect them.

I regret to say that residents of nursing homes and other residential care homes were overlooked and not given the attention that they deserved in phase 1, and to think from today's news that little may have changed is an absolute indictment of the failure of the previous Minister and the current Minister for Health to come to grips with the situation and to right the wrongs of the failure to get it right the first time round. I am not seeking to lay the blame on any one person but the buck has to stop with the politicians in charge of the relevant Departments. There can be no excusing the situation we find ourselves in today. We do not want to hear any more lofty words of concern from Ministers that are not backed up by appropriate action. This is a national emergency. Even if it is six months too late putting in place what is necessary to minimise the loss of life, let the decisions be taken today, but not later than today.

We were put to the test six months ago and we failed the most vulnerable. Let us not have a repeat of the same. I am making as impassioned a plea as I can to the Taoiseach and the Government to treat this issue with the urgency it deserves today, not tomorrow or in the days to come. It is the least we owe our older and most vulnerable and dependent members of the community.

I know what I am talking about. I wrote about this issue in April in the Irish Independentarising out of contacts I was having from people who were involved in contact tracing. At that time, they knew what the Government presumably knew but what the media was not yet covering, which was that there was a serious outbreak in nursing homes. They were asking me to try to get the ball rolling and to push Government and anybody who was listening to make the appropriate arrangements for people who were working in nursing homes, or indeed in private homes giving care, to seek to provide accommodation options, probably with the assistance of shuttered hotels at the time and supported by local authorities, so that there would not be a circular spread of the disease. What I found remarkable at the time in contacting journalists was that they were waiting to see what the Government would tell them at the next briefing and the knowledge on the ground was coming in way ahead of what was being heard on the television and radio news.

The situation has changed. Now that we have public permission to disagree with the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, there are people, including me, taking issue with aspects of the new restrictions. I remain firm in my call for facilitating public worship, not because I think that they have some special entitlement but because I believe that the evidence will show that public worship has been organised in a highly responsible way by highly compliant people and it should be possible for us to facilitate those aspects of our social and national life which are bringing consolation to people and which are supporting people mentally, socially and spiritually, subject, of course, to overriding public health requirements. However, it seems that they are still lacking. There is a desire to get it right but there is something missing in approaches that come down too hard in some areas and seem to stand back then from other areas. Sporting activity is one that many people have been questioning, but all of those issues pale into insignificance compared with the challenge facing our most vulnerable citizens in nursing homes. That, to me, is the most important point that should be galvanising us today.

The Minister of State will not disagree with anything that I have said. I ask her to take the message back to Government that we have failed people previously. It is appalling to think that we could be in the same situation again. That is an indictment of what has not been going on. For God's sack, can we have action now?