Richard Boyd Barrett warns health system is under capacity

There's many areas that are impacted by the current situation, but there's one which seems to me the government should have been thinking about already in terms of our discussions with Europe. One thing that has been revealed absolutely clearly is our public health system is under capacity. Lowest levels of ICU, lowest levels of GP cover, least number of beds, proportion of population. So we have sailed dangerously close to the wind. And I don't think anybody could disagree. We need permanent increases in the capacity of our health service across the board. And we need to make that case to Europe. That there has to be increases in the expenditure in those areas in order to bring our health system up to safe levels. So I just wonder, as the government thought about that and is it discussing it with Europe? And just very briefly, has there been any discussion about what Israel is doing with the Palestinians, as alluded to by Catherine Connolly? Because the Palestinians believe that Israel is using the public health emergency, the COVID-19 crisis, as an opportunity to advance further illegal annexations of Palestinian land in the West Bank. That's very concerning, and I hope the government and Europe is responding to that. So maybe you could indicate if there's any response. Thank you, Deputy Minister. In terms of your first question, or just in terms of the comment in general, I think one of the challenges in responding to COVID-19, and I accept, and I think everyone accepts, that the initial EU response was not as quick as we would like. But what we're facing here is a health crisis, and obviously what happens in our health system in Ireland is different to Germany, is different to France, is different to Greece. It is a national competency. And to try and respond to something collectively was obviously very difficult. And yes, we fell down in certain areas. But what we have tried to do at the very initial stages, whether it's through the relaxation of state aid rules, the response investment initiative, the €750 billion through the ECB, but also these three other pillows that are going to be hopefully in place by the 1st of June, that is funding to invest into our health care systems to make sure that first and foremost, our priority is to save lives and to protect the health of our citizens. I think overall what it's highlighted, particularly as we exit this crisis, and this is something we are talking about, and the Commission has published a paper on this, is how do we exit this safely? And it's very much in line to what we have been looking at here at home in terms of an exit strategy, that we have an increased capacity for testing, an increased capacity for contact tracing, but most importantly, a capacity within our hospitals that should not just this happen again, or that we have a second wave, but that anything like this should happen again, that we have capacity. Within our hospitals to deal with it, so I think we all need to reflect on this, I know our health ministers within the EU are engaging regularly as to how we can collectively respond to this kind of crisis again, because again, it has brought up, you know, holes where we certainly need to fill the gaps when whether it's in terms of protective equipment, whether it's in terms of types of medicines, types of medical equipment or machinery. So, you know, I think there will certainly be acknowledgement taken that there are areas we need to improve, but health is still a national competency and we can't move away from that, but we can certainly learn from this and certainly learn from each other. Thank you very much. Thank you.