Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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698. To ask the Minister for Health whether a pandemic response register exists in his Department; if so, to outline what assumptions, restrictions and response plans are contained within it; and how closely these were followed during the pandemic. [33603/23]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Pandemics occur when an infectious disease emerges and spreads globally. Whilst they do not tend to occur frequently, they are unpredictable events which have the potential to overwhelm the normal health services and severely disrupt the normal social and economic activities of the country, as we have seen through the COVID19 pandemic. Pandemics are identified as a national risk in the National Risk Assessment processes.

As their potential impact is difficult to predict, pandemic preparedness plans or pandemic response registers must be risk-based and flexible in order to enable an appropriate and proportionate response. My Department’s Pandemic Influenza Plan was published in 2007 and was the subject of a detailed review, conducted on foot of the Departmental and HSE response to the 2009/10 Swine Flu Pandemic in 2013. Additional work was conducted in 2019 to update the Department’s Pandemic Plan.

Many of the measures put in place in response to the COVID19 pandemic drew on and further developed actions outlined in the 2007 plan, the recommendations of the 2013 review and work carried out in 2019. This included the establishment of a National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) for COVID 19 in January 2020. A NPHET is an established mechanism for coordinating the health sector response to significant public health emergencies which has been utilised previously a number of times to provide a forum to steer strategic approaches to public health emergencies in Ireland and mobilise the necessary public health and wider health response. For example, National Public Health Emergency Teams have been established in response to public health threats, including H1N1 (swine flu) and CPE (Carbapenemase Producing Enterobacterales). This public health approach is also in line with the advice of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Throughout its existence the NPHET for COVID19 oversaw and provided national direction, guidance, support and expert advice on the development and implementation of a strategy to contain COVID-19 in Ireland. It advised Government on the public health aspects of what was a cross-Government response to COVID-19 as informed by Ireland's National Action Plan in response to COVID-19.

In the context of COVID19 a range of work is currently ongoing nationally and internationally which continues to strengthen pandemic preparedness. The Department and the HSE are engaging on a range of related issues on pandemic preparedness including reviewing the lessons from COVID19, updating preparedness planning for public health emergencies and carrying out exercises to test preparedness.