Nursing homes have been the ground zero of the Covid crisis. A total of 1,543 people have died in nursing homes since the start of the crisis and 369 people have died in nursing homes with Covid just in the last month; and my deepest sympathy goes to each and every one of those families. I am not aware of so many people dying so quickly in any other institutions in the history of this State. In the month of January, Covid has been out of control in nursing homes, to devastating effect, with 193 outbreaks in one month.

We in Aontú have been calling for a public investigation into what has happened in the nursing homes since the start of last year. We did this so the State would learn from the mistakes made and make sure it prevented them in the future. The investigation did not happen and the mistakes were repeated. In the last couple of days, I have reached out to many nursing homes around the country, and I have to say the reports coming back from those nursing homes have been devastatingly uniform. The delay in the vaccine has led to hundreds of deaths - that is what I am being told from the nursing homes.

Take Greenpark nursing home in Tuam, for example. It survived thus far without any infections only to witness 35 of the 49 residents test positive in the week they were due to receive the vaccine. One fifth of those residents have now died. In Blackrock Abbey near Dundalk, 14 people have died, one man dying just a week after receiving the first dose of the vaccine. Nazareth House lost 11 people to Covid in two weeks, and I am told the cemetery for those men who died in Nazareth House is akin to a war grave at the moment.

These deaths happened just before the vaccine was to be administered. It took two weeks from when the vaccines arrived in Ireland until they were first administered in a nursing home. That is a scandal. Why did it happen? Why were just 10% of the initial 77,000 vaccines that were administered by mid-January administered in a nursing home? It is a scandal. Who is responsible for it?

It is heartbreaking to see the devastation that has happened in nursing homes the length and breadth of this country. Those nursing homes are still in crisis. What is doubly heart-breaking is that many of those deaths could have been prevented. They could have been prevented with timely action with regard to these vaccines. Yet, from the Minister for Health, every single interviewer struggles to get a specific date on which vaccines will be rolled out. Why is the Minister for Health allergic to specific dates with regard to delivery of vaccines, especially to nursing homes?

I thank the Deputy. More than 3,000 people in this State and nearly 5,000 people on this island have lost their lives as a consequence of, or at least with, Covid-19, and our condolences go to all of those families, and all who are still grieving in Ireland, North and South. Sadly, it is the case across the developed world that a very high proportion of people who have died from Covid, or died with Covid, were residents of nursing homes. Ireland is not unique in that regard. Even in countries where they have had a very low number of deaths, like Norway and New Zealand, for example, the majority have occurred among residents of nursing homes, care homes or rest homes, as they use the term, and it does not always mean a failing on behalf of the nursing homes or the people who work there, or the health services or the State. The truth is that people who live in nursing homes tend to be very elderly and tend to have underlying conditions and, therefore, are at higher risk of getting very sick and dying if they get coronavirus.

Once coronavirus is prevalent in the community, it is very hard to keep it out of a nursing home, in the same way that it is not possible to keep flu out of a nursing home in any given winter. For exactly this reason, because nursing home residents are at such high risk of getting sick and dying from this virus, they were the group that was prioritised for vaccination. The decision was made to prioritise two groups, nursing home residents and staff, because nursing home residents are at the highest risk of dying from the virus, and our healthcare staff, because they are at a very high risk of contracting the virus and getting sick from it, and we need them to stay well so they can staff our hospitals and nursing homes. Those two groups were prioritised ahead of anyone else. Lots of other countries gave vaccines to politicians, Government members, senior officials - you name it - ahead of nursing homes and health care staff. We took a decision in this country to prioritise our healthcare staff and nursing home residents and staff, and I believe that was the right decision.

I think it is a little simplistic and not entirely correct to say that had the vaccines started a week or two earlier in nursing homes, lives would have been saved. The Deputy cannot say that definitively. He should bear in mind it is only two or three weeks after people get the first dose that they get protection, and only two or three weeks after the second dose that they get full protection, so I do not think the Deputy can necessarily draw the conclusions that he draws.

In terms of responsibility, the decision on prioritisation was made by the National Immunisation Advisory Council, with the support of NPHET. The practical roll-out of the vaccine was carried out by the HSE and, I think, in fairness to the HSE, it has done a really good job; once it has got the vaccines, it has got them out to people. It is a shame we did not get the vaccines a month or two months earlier but we did not, and those things were not under our control.

If the Tánaiste wants to contradict the medical professionals I have spoken to in some of these nursing homes with regard to the timing of delivery of vaccines into those nursing homes, he can, but timing is key, and every single nursing home that is experiencing the wave at the moment will tell him that timing has been absolutely shocking. Things could not have been worse with regard to the timing that has happened. The roll-out of the vaccine in the first number of weeks in this State was scandalously slow.

The other issue that comes up with nursing homes is the fact they are struggling with regard to staff. Nursing home after nursing home will tell the Tánaiste that if any of their staff gets Covid, they are wiped out and they struggle to get replacements. I have asked the Tánaiste about Be On Call for Ireland and he has given me loads of excuses why it has not been used. I got a reply to a parliamentary question this week which states there are 680 people on the Be On Call for Ireland database who are job-ready and ready to go. How can a human resource so critically needed be available and not be used by the State in a sector that is experiencing so much death and destruction?

I thank the Deputy. The sad fact is it could have been worse - it could have been much worse. Many countries around the world have not even started their vaccination programmes yet, and most EU countries are well behind us. We are in the top three or four European countries now in terms of the speed of the roll-out.

Yes, there are countries ahead of us, the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel, for example, but those countries are not part of the European Union. The vaccine was approved earlier in those places than it was here. That is not something that was under our control as a Government.

The majority of nursing home staff and residents have received a first dose of the vaccine. Some have received the second dose. In some cases it was not possible to give the vaccine because either the residents had coronavirus at the time or were sick or ineligible for another reason. Now the HSE is sweeping back to about 100 nursing homes to ensure they vaccinate anyone who was missed or could not have been vaccinated earlier.