Paul Murphy: Demands HEPA Filters in Every Classroom

I want to raise with the Taoiseach the question of HEPA filters in our schools. Yesterday, the Minister for Health told RT Radio that the expert group within the HSE has looked at this, namely HEPA filters in schools, in great detail, and its advice to the Department of Education and the Department of Health is that they are not recommended. Exactly what Minister Donnelly was referring to there is not clear. It is not clear from anything that is published on the relevant websites. But the NEFES expert group on ventilation did recommend back in March that HEPA filters would be useful for schools, particularly for winter months, when it is not possible to have windows open all day. They said HEPA filter devices may be useful in reducing airborne transmission in spaces with insufficient ventilation. Yesterday, Dr. Kim Roberts, a member of the expert group, spoke at a press conference we organised about our ventilation bill and about the need for HEPA filters in schools. The Department of Education, back in May 2021, said that in a certain scenario you should consider a room air cleaner with a HEPA filter. When will the Government change its position and invest in HEPA filters in every classroom? The doctor and I have noticed that in a lot of the contributions, there are references that the Government ended contact tracing or the Government decided this or the Government decided that. It was a decision at the time the Government did take on 27 September. in respect of contact tracing, following and in line with recommendations from NPHET to cease routine contact tracing. So it was a public health advice. Sorry, but do you accept that it was public health advice through the Chair? No, but what I do not accept is the deliberate narrative created by deputies that it was a decision taken without any reference to public health whatsoever from the very same deputies through the Chair, who will argue consistently the need to adhere to public health advice, not only public health advice, but even more severe public health advice such as zero Covid and so on. And then when it suits the deputies, they turn it all around and say, anything that they do not like is the government, not public health. It was the government working on advice from public health who took the decision because at the time the view was that it was leading to disruption within schools and children being out of school. You cannot have it both ways. And you tend to have it both ways and each and every way every time you come in. And what I would also say is, in terms of the HEPA filtrators and in terms of ventilation, there has been guidance issued to the schools. There was extra groups formed. Their fundamental view, by the way, is that the most important ventilation is fresh air. That is the most basic rule of thumb that they have applied. The costings that people are putting forward vary. Magically, people have come up with 12 million. I have been given an estimate that it could be up to 80 million if every single classroom was to be ventilated with a HEPA filter. But again, that can be worked through. What cannot be argued is that hundreds of millions have been allocated to our education system for Covid preparedness. The fact that up to 35,000 CO2 monitors are in schools across the country and almost all the classrooms and so on. That has been very important. I have touched base with some schools in respect of this. They have found them very useful in terms of managing their way through this. In respect of air filtration in schools, there is a facility there to avail of that, to work with departmental technical, technical people who will advise schools who are in difficulty in relation to ventilation and will help those schools to put in ventilation systems. That is there. In the minor capital works programme and so on, there is a sufficiency of capital there for people to have bespoke solutions for their particular school because every school is different. The most important advice to give to schools and pre-school settings is that where children are symptomatic, do not send them to school is the most fundamental advice, where they are symptomatic. One of the biggest issues for the last three months has been RSV. I keep on saying this in terms of children getting ill and children getting hospitalised. It has been RSV and other respiratory illnesses have been the dominant issue this winter amongst children, which has proved challenging. The symptomatic advice applies across the board and would be very helpful. Someone said earlier that parents were sending their children with a spoon or two of Calpon, which is not the thing to do. The antigen testing has been introduced and 8,000 tests were dispatched. I take Deputy Kelly's point. We will follow through and maybe reflect on that. I think the target now is to get to the Christmas break, recalibrate and review how we deal with the next semester. The advice we have received this week is from the public health doctors who are saying that they believe children should reduce their socialisation. Why? Because they showed us graphs yesterday and they have published these graphs that the 5 to 11-year-old are going through the roof literally speaking in terms of numbers or had been for the last number of weeks and their parents also. They are the two big bars in the graph where the numbers have gone up. So they want to bring that down just like we did with the rest of the population. If you remember, two weeks ago our public messaging worked actually in terms of making the statement, following the advice in terms of returning or working from home, the exhortations to people to reduce their socialisation. That has led to a moderation, a stabilisation of hospital numbers and ICUs, but we are still at too high a level in incidence levels. The same advice now has been applied to children from the public health doctors. If we can reduce socialisation overall, we could turn that curve the other way down in terms of those case numbers. I did not probably get to every case, I apologise.