Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. She is here as a Minister in her own right and I have had the benefit of working with her in a committee. We had differing views but she is a competent and capable person with whom I have worked closely and grown to respect and admire in her brief in the disability sector, where she has done powerful work. It ill behoves any of us to make references to people in Ministries as being less than others. They are not. I do not mean to be partisan, patronising or adversarial to anybody but can we please not denigrate each other with comments on the competencies of people here? We are elected. The Minister of State is a fine Minister. We might not agree on everything, and do not, but the Minister of State is most welcome and I have every confidence in her. I will have a row with her in a second, but that is the second part of my contribution.

Senator Conway made a good point. I was listening in the office and came down to support him. I said at the Fine Gael parliamentary party that I cannot comprehend why the Brian MacCraith task force was stood down. I have a fear which I referenced yesterday in this House when I spoke about the HSE paramedic ambulance service in Cork. The reply I got from the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, was positive and indicated that there would be a resumption of the service in the short to medium term. I made the point yesterday that in the HSE world that could be in the never-never. I fear that with this new booster vaccination programme, we should not have got rid of the task force.

Let us look at it from a number of perspectives. Our vaccination programmes one and two have worked extraordinarily well by any standard across the world. What are we hoping to do? We hope that people are immunised and that we slow the transmission of this new variant. That requires a number of things to be done. The first is that we expedite the vaccination programme with our pharmacists and GPs. Many pharmacists want to play a role and I encourage Government and the HSE to work with them. Our primary healthcare system works well when it is resourced properly. Our doctors are doing phenomenal work and we should use them as well.

The other central arm of our vaccination programme, which has been extraordinarily successful, has been our vaccination centres, particularly walk-in centres. Last weekend in Cork there were queues of an hour or an hour and a half, depending on when you went, but people wanted to go and get vaccinated. In County Cork, for example, there is one in Cork city and one in Bantry. To me it makes no sense to have just those two augmenting the work done elsewhere. I hope and believe it is in train that the HSE will react and act on this. It is about saving lives and preventing the spread of the disease. You can take Mallow, Clonakilty, which Senator Lombard mentioned, or east Cork.

I will raise another contentious point. I am being excoriated on social media this morning for my contribution on this issue on the Order of Business. My good friend, Senator Keogan, will have a different viewpoint to me on this, which is fair enough. I respect that. It is not a silver bullet or panacea. We are talking about a multilayered approach but we should give it consideration. I asked on the Order of Business today, although Senator Clifford-Lee is a parent and will probably disagree with me, that our primary schools should close on Friday.

I say this for a number of reasons. First, the level of absenteeism among staff and pupils, whether they are close contacts or have Covid, is quite high. Second, the Minister, Deputy Foley, has rightly made a huge change in the substitution requirements being proffered in schools. I recognise that parents, when they hear people like me saying this, are saying they have childcare needs to be met, work to be done, have not the luxury of being able to work from home anymore, cannot afford childcare or cannot put their traditional childminders, such as grandparents, at risk. I accept and appreciate that and I said it is not a silver bullet. However, using a multilayered approach, we must try to limit the spread of Covid. Where is our most unvaccinated cohort? In my opinion, they are in our primary schools because that group of young people is not vaccinated. Covid is spreading in that cohort quite strongly.

I say that not to be populist or alarmist, but to be helpful and constructive. Schools are closing next week anyway. At secondary or post-primary, there is a higher number of vaccinated people and they are in the end-of-term exams in many cases, which poses a challenge and difficulty. I cite the example of the Netherlands, where they have closed their elementary schools early next week to prevent infecting other family members. As a Government and society, we have been good at protecting our most vulnerable, whether it is the disabled, the elderly or those with underlying health conditions.We have been very proactive in tackling the core group of the most vulnerable. I am very aware as a teacher of the importance of schools and education in the overall, rounded development of our young people. I will be excoriated when I leave here, including on social media, but one cannot live by that. It is a different world that does not necessarily agree with any of us. However, while I accept that schools are where children should be it is Monday and Tuesday of next week. It is two days.