Members and all others in attendance are again asked to exercise personal responsibility in respect of protecting themselves and others from the risk of contracting Covid. Will they please adhere, as they have been doing, to the guidelines?

Storm Barra is raging outside and bringing significant disruption to families, workers and businesses, especially in those counties under red and orange warnings. Today and tonight, people need to stay safe. No one should take chances or risks. It is important that we pay tribute to our front-line workers. After 18 months of heroism, they now find themselves in the eye of the storm, again risking their own safety to keep us safe and the show on the road. We thank them.

Our children are not in school today because of this exceptional storm. We are now in winter and our children and teaching staff have been freezing in classrooms wearing hats and scarves during the school day, with windows wide open in an attempt to keep them safe. We are nearly two years into this pandemic, but the Government has still not delivered a plan for proper ventilation in our schools. It has been clear for some time that high-efficiency particulate air, HEPA, filters have an important role to play in ensuring schools have clean air. They remove contaminants and viruses from the air and help reduce airborne transmission in classrooms with poor ventilation. The WHO, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, ECDC, and the Government's own expert group on ventilation have emphasised the value of HEPA filters in keeping schools safe. Instead of listening to this expert advice and installing HEPA filters in schools, the Government's approach is, as the Taoiseach put it at his press conference on Friday, to open the windows and so on.

Parents and school staff must have been shaking their heads in disbelief. This refusal to act on filtration in schools reminds us of the Government's reticence to accept the advice on mask wearing at the start of the pandemic and its failure to incorporate antigen tests until the eleventh hour in the fight against Covid. We again see no sense of urgency, no forward planning and no common sense from the Government on the issue of ventilation in schools.

It has been known for some time that Covid is an airborne virus and we knew that schools would be a greater challenge in the face of a more transmissible variant. The rates of infection among school-aged children have shot up in recent months. The writing is on the wall and the Government has had ample time and every opportunity to get things right, yet it has wasted these opportunities.

In December last year, Deputy Ó Laoghaire called on the Minister for Education to ensure that schools were provided with devices over the Christmas break to make sure children returned to safely ventilated classrooms last January. He was ignored. Indeed, it took nine months for the Government to act on CO2 monitors. These monitors are badly needed but they do not clean the air. They have to be backed up with a filtration system. We do not have another nine months to wait for the Government to get HEPA devices into classrooms.

Tá sé thar am anois chun a bheith dáiríre faoi aeráil cheart sna scoileanna agus ag coinneáil páistí agus baill fhoirne sábháilte. Tá sé thar am ag an Rialtas scagairí HEPA a fháil i seomraí ranga chomh tapa agus is féidir.

Does the Taoiseach accept we must move beyond opening windows as a plan for ventilation in school and will he commit to immediately commencing the installation of HEPA filters in classrooms?

I again put on the record of the House the Government's deep appreciation for all those in the emergency services who are doing so much across the country to protect life and limb, especially in the south west at the moment, in helping our communities to cope through Storm Barra. Our emergency services, ESB staff, council employees and community workers are all doing so at considerable personal risk and I pay tribute to the National Emergency Co-ordination Centre for the preparatory work it has been engaged in for well over the past week, planning and preparing for what is a very challenging, difficult and varied storm. To the members of that team, we owe an awful lot indeed.

On the situation pertaining to Covid, putting aside all the noise and the attempts to undermine or attack the Government, which is a legitimate position from the Opposition if it wants to pursue that road, the most important collective message we as a House can give to people today is to take their booster vaccine when they are offered it. Vaccination, more than anything else, is protecting people against severe illness, hospitalisation and admission to ICUs. The booster vaccination jabs have been shown to produce very strong antibody responses and are likely to provide protection against severe disease, hospitalisation and death from most variants, including Delta and Omicron.

The reason I am saying this is that in the week commencing 22 November, 208,000 appointments were offered, of which about 80,000 turned up. Last week, of 180,000 appointments, 93,000 turned up. The same urgency does not seem to be there in respect of availing of the option to take the booster as was there when we were offered the first and second doses. In the over-75 group, where people have been taking up the offer of a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in high numbers, we are seeing a significant reduction in the incidence of the disease, so it does work. The booster vaccines will have a really significant impact on Delta. I cannot stress that enough. It is the one message I want to get across today, above and beyond everything else to do with Covid-19.

On ventilation and our schools, the Minister for Education has at all times adhered to expert advice in respect of ventilation. While it may at times be tempting to lampoon the idea of fresh air, the number one item on that expert advice is that, where possible, fresh air is the most effective form of ventilation. Of course, that has limitations in the context of cold and inclement weather. The Minister for Education has provided substantial resources to schools and will continue to do so. Schools will be in a position, if they wish and if it is suitable, to buy HEPA filters for classrooms, but I point out the advice of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, the expert body in the UK, on HEPA filters.

It is saying there is a need for better data on real-world application to support these technologies. It may be a viable solution in spaces where it is difficult to provide good ventilation. SAGE is saying that a lot of the application of filters will depend on the configuration of rooms and certain situations.

The point I would make is this. I have noticed throughout the course of the pandemic that, every now and again, someone comes up with the magic solution. Invariably, there is no one magic silver bullet to deal with Covid. It is a combination of efforts and, right now, it seems to me, from looking at the data, that the most effective thing we can do out there is to encourage people to take their booster vaccine when it is offered.

Of course, there is no single silver bullet, more is the pity, and there is no single answer, including vaccination, although I am never one to lampoon either fresh air or the need for vaccination and for boosters, which is absolutely imperative. However, I asked the Taoiseach a different question. I asked him about ventilation and air quality in our classrooms. Between removing contact tracing from schools, a very sluggish response to teaching supply and mixed and confused messaging on children wearing masks in schools, the Government's record in dealing with staff and children in the classroom is not good. To say to staff and children that the answer is to shiver in classrooms is not acceptable. These HEPA filters are one item, an important item, in the toolbox that we have to keep people safe.

I have asked the Taoiseach a very straightforward question. I have quoted the expert advice. The World Health Organization, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and, indeed, the expert group that his own Government appointed recognise that these filters are an important intervention. Instead of taking a laissez-faire approach with schools, I want the Taoiseach to commit that the Government will ensure that these filters are rolled out. Use the Christmas break, use the opportunity of the kids being on holidays, to install these ventilators and to ensure that we have clean air and that we do not have frozen children and staff members, as one action, but an important action, in an array of things we will have to do to keep our children safe.

I do not know if the Deputy heard my initial reply but the funding will be made available if schools wish to purchase HEPA filters in given situations.

Is that a “Yes”?

I know the Deputy accused us of mixed messaging and so forth. She needs to be very careful before she accuses anyone of mixed messaging. I did watch and hear her as she was beamed in from New York in response to the Government measures, and I was none the wiser at the end of her interview as to whether she approved of those public health measures that the Government decided or not.

I did not approve of the Government’s handling of them. I am sure the Taoiseach was very clear on that. I could not have been clearer.

This is more of the mixed messaging: “I don't agree with the Government's approach and I won't go against the public health message.” Deputy McDonald could not come out clearly like Michelle O'Neill did in the North. I do not agree necessarily with the stance taken there, where Michelle O'Neill was saying there is no need for any more new restrictions. Deputy MacDonald kind of took the halfway house again. Her hallmark-----

Is the Taoiseach going to answer my question?

Her utterances and articulation, unfortunately, throughout the pandemic-----

Will he answer my question? He is the Taoiseach.

-----have been the hallmark of mixed messaging from the get-go.

Really. Okay. Thank you. It is kind of pathetic but-----