Lorraine Clifford-Lee (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for taking time out of his schedule to update us. Thankfully, Covid-19 has in one sense blended into the background of all the other political issues and is not the main political issue. However, we all know that it is still a concern in our hospitals and communities. While the case numbers are high, we are not seeing as many people get as sick. That is a result of the success of the roll-out of the vaccination programme, which was overwhelmingly successful in this country. People bought into it. They trusted what the Minister, the officials in his Department and the people in the HSE were doing. That is very good.

I am quite concerned at the low booster uptake. Many people who are in hospital are not vaccinated or, if they are primarily vaccinated, are not boosted. As the Minister pointed out, some of that is to do with the very high rate of Covid-19 infection over the past couple of months. People are waiting for that to wash through. It would be no harm to have another public awareness campaign in regard to the necessity of the booster because in many people’s minds, this is over and life is back to relative normality. As we know people are still getting infected and are getting quite sick. We all know people who got quite sick over the past couple of months even though they were vaccinated. The public awareness campaign needs to be ramped up a little for the next couple of weeks.

I wish to make reference to the very low mortality rates we have had in Ireland. If we compare that internationally, we will see that it is a really good statistic. We did not throw older people or more vulnerable members of our communities to the wolves. We actually looked after them. When we are assessing this in years to come, the main metric to come out of this will be that we protected the vulnerable people in our communities. That is something we all played our part in. We should all be very proud of that.

I am fascinated with the way other countries, especially in the Far East, are dealing with the pandemic at the moment. I am thinking of China and Hong Kong in particular. They pursued a zero-Covid strategy but are having serious issues at the moment as they seek to handle the pandemic. They are locking down communities again. It is worth noting that when we were debating various Covid legislation, regulations and statements over the past two years, the Minister always pointed out that we could not put a zero-Covid strategy in place, regardless of how attractive that was. We were confident in our plan and our own medical advice. Based on that, we have seen the country through this very difficult period. We are not back to square one as other parts of the world are. Absolutely everybody involved in that effort - the Minister and his officials, Paul Reid and his colleagues in the HSE, the vaccinators, the primary care centre staff and all the front-line workers - is to be commended. It is good that we are in a good place. While the threat is still there, we are in a good place. As the pandemic goes on and we emerge from it, I look forward to discussing the various measures we are going to have to put in place coming into autumn and winter. We are in a dramatically different place from this time last year.