Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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55. To ask the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment if he has received a request from the Minister for Social Protection to designate long Covid as an occupational illness; the current status of the request; the timeline for responding; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6066/23]

Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I can confirm that my Departmental colleague, Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, recently received correspondence from the Minister for Social Protection concerning the communication from the EU Commission about the addition of COVID-19 to the list of reportable occupational diseases.

A reply has issued to the Minister for Social Protection outlining that the implications of this EU Commission communication on the occupational safety and health remit of my Department, and that of the Health and Safety Authority, are minimal. This is primarily because COVID-19 has already been recognised as a biological agent under a 2020 EU Commission Directive (2020/739) (relating specifically to SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19) which came into effect in Irish law through the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Biological Agents) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (S.I. No. 539 of 2020).

In conjunction with the introduction of the Regulations the Health and Safety Authority introduced the 2020 Biological Agents Code of Practice. Under this Code of Practice an employer who becomes aware of a confirmed case of COVID-19 in an employee, as a result of the employee carrying out direct or deliberate work with coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, is required to notify the Health and Safety Authority.

Separately, any decision by the Minister for Social Protection to include COVID-19 in the Occupational Injuries Benefit Scheme will not impact on the existing provisions of occupational safety and health legislation and is a matter for the Minister for Social Protection in the first instance.