Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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1568. To ask the Minister for Health if he will meet with a group (details supplied) in relation to the reason that it is calling for an immediate public inquiry. [29742/22]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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As Minister for Mental Health and Older People, I met with the Care Champions group on the 12th July 2021, and heard the concerns as set out at the meeting and in further correspondence received. I recognise how difficult it has been for people living in nursing homes and their families throughout the pandemic.

I am fully committed to the continued improvement of older persons services, including long term residential care. To this end, there has been significant learnings from the experience and impact of COVID-19 on nursing homes, and more generally, and these learnings are informing a wide-ranging programme of reform which was recommended in the COVID-19 Nursing Homes Expert Panel report.

More broadly, the Taoiseach has indicated that a comprehensive evaluation of how the country managed COVID-19 will be undertaken which will provide an opportunity to learn lessons from our experiences in dealing with a pandemic over the past 2 years. This will help ensure that we are in a better, stronger position if another pandemic or another similar type of emergency arrives. Consideration is being given as to what the best model for this evaluation will be.

In addition, the Minister for Health established a Public Health Reform Expert Advisory Group in January 2022. The Expert Group will initially focus on identifying learnings from the public health components of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland with a view towards strengthening health protection generally and future public health pandemic preparedness specifically. It is important that we have a strong and robust embedded public health system into the future.