I welcome the decision of the Government to have an inquiry into nursing homes during Covid, but the reality is that when HIQA staff visited the Oaklands Nursing Home in County Kerry in November 2020, 27 of its 32 residents had Covid. The general manager and the person in charge were both absent and the person further identified to manage the centre in the event of the absence of those people did not step up and take responsibility for the centre, albeit from a distance as this person lived abroad. That is appalling and disgraceful care of elderly people. The only reason we know about that is that the system worked in the context of HIQA. HIQA discovered it, went in there and during its investigation took over the care and management of that home. Things have worked well and of those 27 people, most survived, although nine of them sadly passed away. If we compare and contrast that with Dealgan House in Dundalk, 22 people died and nobody turned up to help them, neither doctors nor nurses.

I thank the Deputy for his question, for his continued advocacy for nursing homes and older people and for all the work he does on this. The Covid pandemic bore down very hard on our older people, especially those in nursing homes. In the early days, there were a lot of learnings relating to personal protective equipment, PPE, infection prevention and control and best practice.

I also welcome the fact that there will be an inquiry into what happened in respect of Covid over the past three years because there is a lot of learning to be had. In fairness to the Minister for Health at the time, Deputy Harris, he put the expert panel review into nursing homes in place very early in 2020 and all those recommendations have been taken on board and are being put in place. I sympathise with the many families all over the country who lost a loved one in a nursing home during Covid.

I would just make one correction. Nurses and doctors did turn up but not immediately. Most of them did not turn up when they were asked.

The Deputy will have to take it elsewhere. I call Deputy Gould.