Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is merit in what is being proposed here regarding oversight and the availability of information. The more information people have, the more informed they are about why decisions have to be made, the purpose of those decisions and the effect they will have. Information is powerful and no organisation should ever be afraid of sharing as much information as possible. I believe there will be a public inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. That is only right and proper because if we do not learn lessons about how to do things better, we will not be properly equipped for future pandemics. We have now been through one so we have to be able to write the handbook. Hopefully it will be a long time before we have another one but it may not be. We are dealing with the spending of billions of euro of public money.Lessons have to be learned in terms of time lapses and so on. A couple of decisions were made which I could not understand. I could not understand why the task force headed up by Brian MacCraith was stood down when we knew we would have to give booster vaccines. I cannot fathom why it was stood down. There could be a logical reason but it is not evident to me.

I also could not understand the logic of letting staff go from the vaccination centres when we experienced a lull towards the end of the summer and then struggling to rehire them. Those decisions were clearly made by officials in the Department for some reason. It was probably being penny-wise and pound-foolish. There are certain areas we need to scrutinise and we have to ask questions as to why these things happened. We may get satisfactory answers. I intend to pursue it through the health committee when the opportunity presents itself.

On the availability of data and information, I do not think we are the worst in the world at it. We had the figures every evening. Sadly, we had the number of people who died published every evening. In the UK, what is released is the number of people who died who had tested positive for Covid in the previous 28 days. What has gone on in England and the non-availability of data and information has not helped us. We have been far better at it but we have seen the chaos there over recent weeks and know they are chaotic at the best of times. Had they been more upfront with their information, it would have assisted us.

Europe has lessons to learn. At the start of the vaccine roll-out, Europe did not paint itself in glory in its handling of that. It got its act together. I have said many times that had Phil Hogan still been Trade Commissioner at the time the vaccine difficulties presented themselves, they would have been sorted out more quickly because he had the experience of dealing with agriculture for the previous five years and the intricacies and difficulties that presented. Europe has now gone to the other extreme and that is a good thing.

What has gone on in the Third World and the lack of information and data there is frightening. Unless everyone is jabbed, we are not dealing with it. That is a major problem.

In terms of us, this country and information, we can give ourselves a B+. We want an A1 but, compared to other countries, we are way ahead.