Éamon Ó Cuív questions HSE redeployment to COVID testing

Minister, what I am enquiring is the number of persons involved in testing and tracing as part of the COVID-19 response that have been transferred to this work from other sections of the HSE because people have been transferred from therapies and so on and if you would make a statement of this and explain to us why it was impossible to leave all the workers that should have been in these positions in position and hire other people to do this necessary testing and tracing work. Minister Dunley. Thank you very much for the question, Deputy. Since the beginning of the pandemic we've pursued a robust testing and contact tracing strategy. The HSE has worked intensively to put in place a comprehensive, reliable and responsive testing and tracing operation in a very short time frame. The redeployment of existing staff from other areas of the HSE, including to the deputy's point, frontline services was an essential part of this response. Since the height of the pandemic there has been a very significant return of staff back to non-COVID frontline roles. This has been facilitated by an ongoing recruitment process through which the HSE has recruited 675 new contact tracers and 565 swabbers to date. Recruitment in these areas will continue until the targets of dedicated staff of 800 in contact tracing and 1,000 in swabbing are met. This will allow the remaining redeployment staff to return to their original roles. I've been informed, Deputy, that there are currently 411 staff redeployed to swabbing operations made up of both healthcare workers and non-patient facing administrative and management staff. Of the current staff currently redeployed to contact tracing, none of these are from patient-facing roles or patient-focused roles. Areas such as complex contact tracing will continue to require some level of redeployed community staff. Where these staff remain in COVID-19 services, it is intended that their posts will be backfilled in their substantive posts. While we remain cognizant of the potential for future demands associated with surges in COVID-19, the aim is to return redeployed staff to their substantive posts as soon as possible and to ensure that posts are backfilled when this isn't possible. I've asked the HSE to expedite this process. At the end of September, I also announced plans to double the workforce in our public health departments by hiring more public health doctors, public health nurses, scientists and support staff. And the hiring process has commenced. Thank you, Minister Deputy O'Keefe. Minister, can you tell me how many people from redeployment, and particularly non-administered staff, are engaged in testing, not in complex tracing? And how many are involved in routine tracing that has been done, for example, by people from the Army and so on, therefore, can be done by competent people, but people who don't necessarily have to have a medical background, as I understand, the actual people who carry out the tests don't either. Minister, it seems to me that the HSE is a total inability to recruit speedily. And I find it difficult to understand how it took so long to replace necessary HSE staff with people brought in for this purpose. Can you explain how long does it take to HSE from the day they get an application for a job to the time to make an appointment? And what are the processes that take such a long time for such a clearly defined purpose? Thank you, Deputy Minister Donnelly. Thank you, Deputy, for the question. Deputy, to answer your direct question about how many people, so the total, as you say, in contact tracing, there are now no therapists or frontline community therapists who are working in contact tracing. They've all been redeployed. In swabbing, there's a current workforce of 736. Of this, 411 are redeployed staff. That combines both the therapists who we're talking about and the non-patient-facing roles. From memory, Deputy, I am open to correction and I will revert to you with an up-to-date figure. I received a report about 10 to 14 days ago that the number of therapy grades was at about 279 within swabbing. But I will revert to the Deputy with the most up-to-date figure on that. I've engaged repeatedly with the HSE. The HSE, to their credit, let's remember, have created one of the most comprehensive testing and tracing regimes anywhere in the Western world from a standing start. That did require pulling in therapists. I agree with the Deputy and the HSE are very cognisant of getting the therapists back to their frontline roles as quickly as possible. Minister, you've just said that over 200 therapists are involved in swabbing. Now, what it means is that 500 of them weren't in therapists, so it also means that if there had been a quicker recruitment and there were a huge number of really well-qualified, competent people out there who were unemployed because of COVID, we could have allowed the therapists back into their jobs. Can you give me an estimate of the increase in the waiting list for therapies of many, many kinds that has occurred due to the fact that there have been long non-crisis redeployments? I can understand that in the first lockdown you had to do something fast, but I do not understand that we're at the end of the year and we still have over 200 therapists involved in the swabbing. Minister, I would be very interested if we could just get some idea as to why it wasn't possible to get out there and imply these non-therapy people, and can you also give me some indication of the effect this has had on various waiting lists in the various CHO2s around the country or CHOs around the country? Thank you, Deputy Minister Donnelly. Thank you, Deputy Minister Donnelly. Thank you very much for that, Deputy. You know, it would be easy for us to say COVID should be a fully stand-alone service line within the HSC and that we should be able to run one of the most comprehensive testing and tracing systems anywhere in the world, completely independent of the existing HSC workforce. But I don't think that would be a realistic ask of the HSC. The HSC have pointed out to me repeatedly that while they are redeploying as fast as they can and they are backfilling posts as fast as they can, obviously it is a difficult recruiting environment generally. But also they have said the swabbing centres and the swabbing service is a serious clinical activity. They have people in there who are managing teams, they are experienced clinicians and it is simply not possible to remove all of that clinical experience, all of that therapy experience, all of the experience of people who have been involved right from the start and have a stand-alone service. There has to be continuity, there has to be senior clinical supervision and that is something that they are maintaining. But they have committed to redeploying as fast as is possible but also as fast as is appropriate in order to maintain the safety and quality standards within swabbing. But I fully agree with the deputy, there is a real cost to these therapists not being in their frontline roles and we have testimony from right around Ireland, particularly of children who haven't been able to get the access they normally would because of this. It is unfortunately one of the things we are having to deal with within the HSC, within the healthcare system in a time of COVID when essentially the same system is having to do both roles. We are having to fight COVID and Ireland is doing very well by any international standards you want to look at in our fight against COVID and we have to run the full healthcare system at the same time and try and alleviate things like trolley crises which we saw in previous years.