Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her response. She has provided a lot more detail than I had heretofore, which is very welcome. However, the sum of €2.2 million equates to less than €50,000 per week and I certainly hope that in the budget of 2023, that figure will be substantially increased. I welcome the fact that we will have six long Covid clinics in the various hospital groups but I am disappointed that the figures have not been collated to date or that we have not been given, at the very least, preliminary figures for the number of people suffering from long Covid. We were one of the best countries in the world in responding to Covid-19 and we must now be one of the best in the world in responding to long Covid. I hope we are gleaning information internationally on how long Covid is being dealt with in other countries, especially those that performed as well as we did during the pandemic. This is a disease that citizens in our country did not have five or ten years ago. As a new phenomenon, it requires a comprehensive response. While we have made a good start, there is much more work to be done.