Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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113. To ask the Minister for Health his plans for recruitment across the public health regions to ensure they can chase down the SARS Cov2 virus, to learn all there is to learn from this work and to help protect the population from Covid-19 and from future pandemics; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42365/20]

David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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151. To ask the Minister for Health his plans to reverse underinvestment in public health departments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42340/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 113 and 151 together.

Public Health plays a key strategic and leadership role in promoting health and protecting the population from threats to health, such as Covid-19. Public Health operationalises population level pandemic response plans and coordinates activities across multiple stakeholders including emergency and acute hospital services.

This government is committed to investment in our public health workforce. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were 254 people working full-time across Ireland’s public health workforce. At the end of September, I announced ambitious plans to double this workforce by hiring more public health doctors, nurses, scientists and support staff. Recruitment for these positions commenced immediately and is progressing well.

The HSE’s Pandemic Workforce Plan also includes the recruitment of 400 temporary staff to Public Health Departments across the country in order to strengthen our response to the current pandemic.

The permanent resourcing committed in the workforce plan is an investment in the future service delivery model for Public Health, as envisaged in the 2018 Crowe Horwath Report.