Ireland-Northern Ireland Covid data sharing
Deputy Howlin pressed for clarity on cross-border Covid cooperation and complaints that data sharing was too slow. The Tánaiste said an MOU operates between the chief medical officers and through ministerial contacts, with regular political engagement.
I ask the Tánaiste to set out clearly and specifically the degree of co-operation between our authorities and Northern Ireland on Covid.
I listened to his comment in reply to another Deputy that there were problems with data-sharing. That is just not acceptable. I understand there is a memorandum of understanding. How is that being implemented, specifically? I am hearing increasingly complaints that there is not a timely exchange of data, that information co-ordination is far from what it should be and that that is having an impact on our effectiveness as an island to combat Covid.
What co-operation is there, who is driving it, what is the nature of it and what is the Government's intent? Is it the Government's intent to have a co-ordinated island approach? If it is, what specifically is the Government doing to achieve it?
Comment on this
As the Deputy mentioned, a memorandum of understanding, MOU, is in place between Northern Ireland and Ireland. It operates mainly at Chief Medical Officer, CMO, to Chief Medical Officer level, so it is Dr. Tony Holohan and Dr. Michael McBride who mainly operate the MOU, but of course there is close contact between the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and the Minister, Robin Swann, in Northern Ireland. Regularly, there are meetings involving the First Minister, the deputy First Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and sometimes the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
We are two different jurisdictions; that is the reality of the situation. Part of the Good Friday Agreement provides that Northern Ireland is autonomous and makes it own decisions, and we make our own decisions as well. We do not have the exact same strategy and policies, but as much as possible we try to co-ordinate and align what we are doing. We have seen difficulties when there is one set of restrictions north of the Border and another south. We try to align the restrictions as much as possible. They are fairly aligned at the moment because both the North and the South are in lockdown. We have not been able to do that in respect of travel into Belfast because that is considered by the Executive to be domestic travel. We are trying to-----