Senator Gerard Craughwell - speech from 26 Jan 2021

Go raibh maith agat Cairnailuk. Minister, thank you for coming to the House today to represent the Minister for Health at this important debate. The first point I'd like to make, Minister, is I believe that the HSE has been overstressed in the responsibilities that have been placed on it by Government. It's responsible for the general health care of the public, it's responsible for the test and tracing and now it's responsible for the rollout of the vaccine. It's my view and I want to put it on the record that there should have been a single person reporting directly to the Taoiseach who would be responsible for the rollout of the vaccine and that that person would have the Taoiseach's authority to cut through any red tape or any blockages that may be in the system in order to get the vaccine out up and running as fast as possible. With respect to the vaccine I'm wondering why aren't the Government giving the numbers every evening on RTE we get the bad news at 6 o'clock and it has become a feature in all of the households that I am engaged with that 6 o'clock every evening I wonder what the numbers are going to be this evening. Wouldn't it be great to hear that we rolled out 1,000 vaccines today, we had 1,000 infections but we rolled out 2,000 vaccines. Wouldn't that be an important PR message to get out there for Government but more importantly it would be giving hope to the people that are depending. Because there was I believe Minister once the vaccines were approved there was a sort of a euphoria ran through society, oh this is great, vaccine on the way, we're covered, great stuff, we can all get back to normal. Until we look up the ready reckoner that was put on the internet there some time ago and I looked if you're 40 years of age and healthy in this country you're not likely to be vaccinated until sometime in November to May of 2022. So you know we need to get people aware of the fact that this is a slow and extremely arduous programme to roll out but not only that, the manufacturers themselves can run into problems as it goes along and as a Government we have to be honest with people and say you know AstraVeneca, whatever, may run into difficulties in the production and if they do it's going to set back our programme and people need to be aware of that and need to be comfortable with it. I cannot for the life of me understand why we are not rolling out antigen testing. I see it's been rolled out in every school in Austria now, I see it's been rolled out in other European countries and for some reason we seem to have a mental block when it comes to the antigen testing which would give an answer in 30 minutes. It would put us in a situation where we could open our schools, we could open our retail, we could open our restaurants and we would test staff at the point of entry every morning. I understand from the little knowledge I have and I'm no medic but from the little knowledge I have I understand that the antigen test will give a result within 30 minutes and it is particularly good where there is a heavy infection. So I know that there has been some move recently to do that but you know this morning we had a discussion here about the leaving search which I believe should be postponed now, in fact I think it should be scrapped this year and either set the year back or put ourselves in a situation where we will deal with the same system as we had in 2020. So that's something that is of concern to me. Again with the rollout of the vaccine we have a two-stage rollout on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland has been rolled out on one particular and the Republic here has been rolled out in a different way. The issue of quarantine has come up and I heard the Minister for Justice on Sunday saying we are not going to control the border and I don't intend to discuss it any further type thing. We controlled the border for foot and mouth disease in 2001-2002 to protect sheep and cattle. Now we cannot cull humans so surely to God we should be controlling the border. Of course the problem with controlling the border is countless governments have disinvested in the defence forces and in Garda presence on the border and we are in the result that we would have great difficulty in doing it but we should do it. And we should do it in cooperation with the PSNI in Northern Ireland where people crossing from this side over would be stopped as well. So if we cannot get agreement with the Northern Executive on an exactly similar system, a facsimile of both sides, if we cannot get that then we must seal the border and allow our vaccination programme to go ahead independent of what is going on elsewhere in the world. I would like to know Minister, and it is probably a bit unfair to ask you today, but can you set out precisely what has been discussed that is stopping the control of the border? Now I think the original plan, if you want, for the rollout, nobody in this country would deny those who are in long-term care facilities who are 65 or over from having the vaccine. And I would, again, I'd love to know how far we are with that and how many nursing homes are left in the country that need to have the vaccine. No difficulty with that at all. Frontline healthcare workers. It's a title that is fraught with all sorts of argument. Who is frontline? Yes, I was in hospital two weeks ago. I had surgery two weeks ago in hospital. I have to say they were marvellous, right? And the frontline people that looked after me were great. I was tested on the way in, tested while I was in there and tested on the way out. Fantastic. Everybody will agree that people working in medical institutions should be administered the vaccine. But we want to open schools. Don't tell me please today that children don't transmit the vaccine or the COVID. And don't tell me please that they're not susceptible to it. My three-year-old granddaughter tested positive for COVID-19 and locked us all up for a fortnight. She was only three. So if she can test positive, any child can test positive. So from that point of view, I believe we should be looking after our teachers. There is an important part of frontline work in this country as the hospitals are if we want to get our children back into the schools. I would also say the same applies to the Defence Forces and the Gardaí. I have to compliment the Gardaí. Every day over the weekend out where I live up close to the Dublin Mountains, there were Gardaí checkpoints all over the place turning people back. Doing the job they're being asked to do by the government. They should have been vaccinated by now in order to protect them. The 65 to 69-year-olds with medical conditions. I think this is seriously flawed, Minister. I think of those children over 16 years of age with, what do you call it, CF. I think of the children over 16 years of age who have suffered from cancer, whose immune system is seriously, seriously threatened. Why in God's name haven't we included them in one of the top levels of rollout that they would be protected from the earliest possible date? Key workers, when we talk about key workers, for me, and I don't know how my colleagues feel about it, but for me, the key worker is the young lady or young man that's sitting at the cash register in Dunn's stores. For me, the key worker is the bus driver that is met every day by the few people who have to travel to work. And I fully, I have tremendous respect for Professor McKay, but at the end of the day, I think we need to go back and look and see who are the real key workers. Look, there's lots of other things I would say. I will say this much, Minister, where the vaccine is concerned. The anti-vaxxers get off my back. I don't want to hear from you. And if I need to do it, I'll have my vaccine given to me out on the plinth in full public view. These clowns are causing serious, serious problems, particularly for elderly people who are saying, God, maybe they're right. Maybe there's something wrong with this. So, Minister, I congratulate you for what you're doing. You're doing a good job, but we need to ramp up the PR on it. Thank you.