More than half of the 2,460 people who have died with Covid-19 in the State died in nursing homes. In December, two thirds of the deaths that occurred were due to outbreaks in nursing home and hospital settings. Outbreaks in nursing homes doubled to 52 just last week, while cases of Covid-19 in nursing homes increased by 500%. The latter gave rise to 24 deaths in the past week alone. God rest each of those individuals. Currently, there are 800 staff missing from nursing homes across the sector. The issue is so critical that some nursing homes are texting family members of residents and asking them to come in and help. The people who are most vulnerable to Covid-19 have been the most exposed.

At the start of the pandemic, the then Minister, Deputy Harris, launched the Be On Call for Ireland campaign. Some 70,000 people responded, but only 200 were employed. I have taken dozens of calls from medical professionals who applied but who were never employed. There are many newspaper reports about people who applied but were not employed.

The Deputy is over time.

The Tánaiste touched on this matter earlier, but he did not answer the question. Why has this critical human resource not been used?

The Deputy is absolutely right to raise the issue of nursing homes. In the first and second waves of the infection the majority of deaths that occurred in Ireland as a consequence of Covid-19 involved people who were residents of nursing homes. There has been a similar pattern across the developed world. It is mainly due to fact that the people who are living in nursing homes tend to be elderly and frail in health terms. That is why we have prioritised vaccinating nursing home residents and staff, all of whom will have had or been offered their first dose by next weekend and will have been offered their second dose by the middle of February.

We are putting them first in this regard.

I did not mean to gloss over the question on Be On Call for Ireland, if that is what I did. I am just not up to date on the situation in that regard. I will check it out with the Minister for Health. When I was up to date on it a few months ago, we ran into real issues with it, in that a large number of people volunteered to be available but they were not necessarily qualified or resident in the State.

I thank the Tánaiste.

A lot of them were already working in other parts of the health service, including in nursing homes, and wanted to move to hospitals. I will get the Deputy a better update on it.