Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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142. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if a dedicated helpline and email address will be created for business owners in the hospitality industry to seek clarity on the permissibility of planned events in advance of the planned lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in October 2021. [44345/21]

Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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143. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he will ensure that all staff in his Department and public bodies and agencies that operate under his remit who, by necessity of their work have to come into close proximity with others, including other employees or members of the public are provided with medical grade masks in the EN14683 category; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44371/21]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The wearing of medical grade facemasks is predominately for “front line” workers such as those in the medical/healthcare sector and other key sectors whose work, by necessity, means that they will come into close proximity with others.

The vast bulk of staff across my Department and its Offices are office-based workers based across eleven buildings across the country. Each building has a range of health and safety mitigations already in place, aligned to the national Work Safely Protocols, and where mask wearing is an important element of a suite of measures to guard against the spread of COVID-19.

My Department has a dedicated Health and Safety Unit with responsibility at Principal Officer level, whereby the objective is always to ensure a safe and appropriate working environment for all staff and visitors across our buildings. As a consequence of the pandemic, we quickly introduced a range of measures such as adjusting our accommodation setup to provide for social distancing, enhanced cleaning regimes and adjustments to our door access systems to reduce the risk of disease transmission. These are just some of the measures introduced since March 2020. Where a staff member has a particular health and safety concern(s) they are encouraged to make that known directly to their line manager, or to the Health and Safety Unit or the HR Unit of my Department, depending on the nature of the individual issue and all reasonable assistance will be provided to staff, which may include the provision of specific health and safety related equipment, where warranted.

The nature of the work of my Department means we have minimal direct interaction with members of the public in our buildings. We have no public offices in the Department. The primary “face-to-face” onsite interaction with the public as we continue to transition back to our buildings is predominately undertaken by the Labour Court and the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). Other Offices, such as the Companies Registrations Office and the Intellectual Property Office of Ireland have moved more and more of their operations online over recent years as part of the public sector reform process.

For the small number of Departmental staff, such as our Service teams on Reception in our buildings or the WRC Inspectors, who would have more direct contact with members of the public, we have provided appropriate PPE to enable them to safely conduct their roles.

The day-to-day operations of the Agencies under the remit of my Department is a matter for the respective Board and heads of the Agencies to oversee and manage though the majority of the Agency staff roles would be desk/office bound roles, whereby local arrangements would be very similar to those in place in my Department and also aligned to the national Work Safely Protocols.