Richard Boyd Barrett: Demands Permanent Health Capacity and Pay
Richard Boyd Barrett urged that public health must lead the economic strategy and called for permanent increases in testing, tracing, ICU capacity and staff pay. He warned against temporary measures, private provision and a return to austerity as Ireland transitions through the COVID crisis.
Calls for permanent health investment
He said dramatic, permanent increases are needed in testing and tracing capacity, including lab capacity, lab technicians and equipment, not temporary measures. Boyd Barrett argued the scale of testing and tracing required to move back to normality demands long-term funding and staffing commitments.
Nursing homes, staffing and ICU capacity
He highlighted Sam McConkie's estimate that nursing homes need 20 to 30% additional staff and criticised the ongoing understaffing and under-resourcing of care homes. He said additional ICU capacity must also be permanent, likely a doubling to reach European levels, and stressed recruitment, training and pay for health workers are essential.
Concerns about recruitment and agency use
He gave an anecdote of a nurse friend who volunteered weeks earlier but still had not been placed, questioning reliance on agencies like CPL and whether recruitment is being handled to avoid long-term hires. He insisted the health service needs properly paid, permanent staff rather than temporary solutions.
Integrated public health service and profit
Boyd Barrett called for an integrated public health service to resolve the lack of coherence and consistency in current services, saying "public health" must mean public provision. He argued that profit must be removed from the core public health response if the state is to protect people while living with COVID.
Social cohesion and opposition to austerity
Citing Sam McConkie's framework, he linked social cohesion to social trust and perceived equality, arguing true social equality is required to maintain trust. He warned against tapering off COVID payments and signalled that a return to austerity would undermine the social contract needed to emerge from the crisis.
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Okay, thanks and I'm sharing my time with Deputy Barry. Minister, I welcome the fact that you said that the economic strategy should be led, first of all, by public health concerns. But I think those words have to have meaning. They can't just be a rhetorical commitment to put public health first. Now, in the immediate term, putting public health first means we have to have the resources to dramatically ramp up the testing and tracing regime. And that is going to mean permanent increases in lab capacity, lab technicians and all the various equipment investment that is necessary in order to have a testing and tracing regime on the scale that is necessary to have some chance to move back to normality. Right? It can't be temporary. It has to be permanent. And that's a lot of investment. And there has to be clear commitment to that. Sam McConkie has said the nursing homes need 20 to 30% additional staff. That has to be permanent. They were understaffed, under-equipped, under-resourced. That has to be put right and it has to be permanent. I have a friend who's a nurse who put herself forward for the call for Ireland four weeks ago. She still hasn't been placed. She's willing to work in nursing homes. Why is that not happening? Why is it not happening? And I'd hate to think it's happening because the government is being careful about how many people it recruits in case it has to keep them employed on the other end of this crisis. That would not be good enough. The ICU capacity. Same point. We need permanent increases, probably as a minimum, a doubling of ICU capacity. At the moment, the additional ICU capacity is temporary. And once we start to restart the rest of the health service, that temporary additional capacity could potentially be eaten up. So we need permanent increases in ICU capacity. To bring us even to the European level, we have to double it. And a key part of that is staff. It's not just equipment, it's staff. You've got to employ and train the staff. And you've got to pay for that. So there has to be a commitment. So there has to be a commitment. If we're serious about public health concerns leading this, that there's going to be permanent and dramatic increases in capacity and in staffing in the health service and in the resources necessary to deliver the tracing and testing regime. And that also means you've got to pay health workers. That's why we couldn't recruit them over the last year or two to increase the capacity of the health service because we weren't paying them. And again, my nurse friend asks me, why is it that she hasn't been recruited? Is it also because it's being done by CPL, that there's an agency factor in this and there's a reluctance to actually recruit people to pay them properly as permanent new members of the health service? It seems to me also obvious, you've got to have an integrated health service. I mean, I heard when I made the point, the lesson of this has to be an entity to chair system. The Taoiseach says, oh, well, there's no proof that the privates or public are performing any better. What there is absolutely clear evidence of is the lack of coherence, consistency and integration of our health services that can only be achieved by having a single integrated public health service. And the clue is in the word public health, public health. Profit has to go out if we are to transition back while living alongside COVID and be able to protect ourselves in the future against these things. That's a no brainer. To me, it is beyond doubt. But the other thing, Sam McConkie pointed out in his document he produced weeks ago, is to do this, you have to have social cohesion. He says, to have social cohesion, we need widespread social trust. To achieve social trust, we need a widespread perception of social equality. To achieve a perception of social equality, we need social equality. Exactly. Socialism. OK, you cannot have workers like Debenham workers, thrown out by the private market, interested only in profits and left on the scrap heap, particularly when the state has a stake in that. That cannot be done. You cannot taper off. The alarm bells ring when I hear about you talking about divisive choices and tapering off COVID payments. The alarm bells of austerity ring. There can be no return to austerity if we are to have the social cohesion and social trust necessary to transition out of this crisis and into the new social contract we need in order to come out the other side of this crisis.
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