I raise the adverse affect the coronavirus is having on people with various other illnesses or health issues in County Kerry and around the country. At present there are no orthopaedic procedures being carried out in Tralee General Hospital unless they are emergencies due to fractures or something very urgent. People are being told that routine procedures will take four to five years and it is two years for elective procedures. Sick people cannot visit GPs or GPs cannot visit them. Consultations are mostly by phone and this system does not help the confidence of patients in terms of recovery. There are bed reductions in our community hospitals. Killarney Community Hospital closed 15 beds. Perhaps consideration should be given to opening up the single beds in the Kenmare hospital which is a new hospital that does not have wards but single rooms. St. Columbanus Home, a public nursing home, is to close 27 beds.

This is impacting badly on people in the Killarney catchment area. Patients in hospitals or homes cannot have visitors, which is very hard on elderly people. We should be able to facilitate one or two family members every four or five days. I know of a family who brought their father home because they could not bear the thought of not seeing him in Tralee general hospital. More likely than not, elderly sick people do not have time on their side. The primary medical certificates required by disabled people, children and the elderly, including people who have had strokes, to adapt their car or help them to buy a modified car are not being processed. Where are all the billions been given to the HSE? If the HSE allocation was doubled, I do not believe it would or could deliver a proper service.

People in Kerry cannot get the flu vaccination. Doctors have only a small number of vaccines and have to decide who needs it most. People are ringing every day for more than a month and they cannot get the vaccine.

Depression and suicides have increased because of the virus. It is very clear that even before the virus Kerry did not have adequate facilities to admit patients with mental health issues. Dr. Finnerty has said that patients who have repeated admissions because of a lack of adequate facilities have to be let out and brought back in again. She calls it the revolving door of admissions. I know of one person who has been waiting in constant pain since 1 March and had a pre-operative assessment on 12 August.

Thank you, Deputy.

This person has been seven times in the accident and emergency department in Cork recently and is still in constant pain and needs a procedure.

Thank you, Deputy.

I tabled a parliamentary question to the Department of Health and the reply I received told me it is recognised that waiting times for scheduled appointments and procedures have been impacted as a direct result-----

The time is up Deputy, please.

-----of the coronavirus. This is not good enough.

The Deputy has raised a few important issues. With regard to the flu vaccine, there is very high demand for it at present, which is encouraging. People who did not seek the flu vaccination in previous years are seeking to be vaccinated this year and this is a real positive. Supply is short, not just in Ireland but internationally. There is more on the way. No matter what happens, we will vaccinate many more people against the flu this winter than we have in any winter in the past. Important progress is being made. We do need to prioritise and it is those who need it most who are being prioritised, including healthcare workers, older people and those with chronic conditions, and children between the ages of two and 12 years using the nasal spray to vaccinate them.

With regard to suicide and deliberate self-harm, we recently had a discussion on the mental health impact of the pandemic and the lockdown at the Cabinet committee on social policy. The evidence and research we have so far does not show any increase in suicide or in deliberate self-harm during the pandemic period. Please God this will continue to be the case and will continue to be true. It is certainly the case that the pandemic and the lockdown are having an impact on people's mental health and we are seeing an increase in calls and inquiries to mental health services and resources are being increased precisely because of this.

With regard to waiting lists, I totally appreciate what the Deputy has said, and far too many people are waiting for too long in Ireland for the operation or appointment they need. The health budget for 2021 is €4 billion higher than this year, which is an extraordinary increase in the budget. It is ten times the type of increase we might have seen in the past. Of this, €2 billion is for Covid and €2 billion is for non-Covid. I hope this will allow us to make real inroads into the waiting lists in 2021.

The Tánaiste has spoken about health service workers. A young fellow told me that he is lame since February and was told today he will have to wait three years before he is seen to. The people of Kerry and Ireland want to know who is responsible for giving the order to specialists, consultants and hospitals to cancel or defer appointments and defer elective procedures. Is it the Government, the Minister for Health, NPHET or Dr. Tony Holohan? What will these specialists be doing in the meantime? People can die from other illnesses and diseases as well. Just because the coronavirus arrived does not mean people will not get other illnesses or suffer great pain and, indeed, die from other illnesses.

Thank you, Deputy.

The Government has to recognise this and Dr. Tony Holohan has to recognise this.

We do recognise that and I know the chief medical officer recognises it also. One of the real concerns we have during the pandemic is what people call secondary deaths, for example, people who have a heart attack not going to the hospital because they think it is overwhelmed and they do not want to bother the doctors and nurses, and perhaps people who have stroke symptoms delaying seeking medical help because of the pandemic. This is a real worry we have, which is why we are sending out the message that everyone who needs medical attention should seek it. We have 800 more beds, including 400 acute and 400 subacute, than we had in March, and many fewer than this number of patients in hospital with Covid. If we look at the level of overcrowding and the number of trolleys, people on trolleys in our hospitals has not been lower since records began. We have capacity and we are saying to people that if they need medical help they should seek it. On occasion, hospitals do have to cancel operations and there may be various reasons in different cases why this is. It could be because of a lack of beds but it could also be for other reasons.