Liam Quaide
Cork East · Social Democrats · Ireland
“The Department is not funding the teams. That is the main issue. There is a stark double standard here. In mainstream CAMHS, multidisciplinary staffing is treated as basic good practice.”
“I already established, earlier this year, that the staffing levels of CAMHS-ID teams across the country are abysmal. These are children and teenagers with very complex needs. They experience major challenges across all aspects of their daily lives, including with communication and learning.”
“I ask about CAMHS-ID services, which are specialist teams for children and adolescents with a moderate to profound intellectual disability and coexisting mental health difficulties. According to the HSE, and by its own admission, no CAMHS-ID team nationally is staffed to the level recommended in its own model of care.”
“This is a particularly vulnerable cohort of young people, and the lack of investment is particularly stark. The Minister of State should not look at me with an expression of incredulity because we have seen this across primary care and in child, adult and older adult mental health services. This is all out in the public domain.”
“Their needs are often more complex than those of young people attending standard CAMHS. I am asking the Minister of State for a clear commitment. When will the Government move beyond small, incremental additions year by year and fully fund CAMHS-ID teams in every region? When will that happen?”
“Worried, anxious, fearful, angry, afraid, powerless, terrified, scared, overwhelmed, abandoned, hopeless. Words like these came up again and again in a survey the Social Democrats conducted in the run-up to this motion.”
The complete record
Every one of 623 lines we hold for Liam Quaide, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 13.
“While we absolutely agree that there is a need for better crisis-care alternatives, such as crisis rooms, crisis assessment services, community crisis centres a core issue remains, we must also strengthen community and early-intervention supports in order that far fewer people reach crisis point in the first place. That means properly resourced community mental health teams, primary care services, youth services, addiction supports and crisis teams. It means developing the crisis houses that were recommended in a Vision for Change and that never materialised. When these are either not in place at all or are not fully in place, emergency departments become the pressure valve for a system that has failed further upstream.”
“What happens when community services are thin on the ground, crisis teams are understaffed and early intervention for those with psychosis is unavailable? Pressure builds in emergency departments. People deteriorate while they are waiting. Staff are overwhelmed and the most vulnerable pay the price. The Government spoke soothingly about trauma-informed care in Sharing the Vision. That language is welcome, but rhetoric without sufficient resources does not calm a distressed person at 3 a.m. in a crowded emergency department corridor. It does not provide privacy, dignity or psychological safety.”
“There is substantial variation in quality across the State. This is not a marginal problem. It is a core test of whether our mental health policy means anything in practice for tens of thousands of people, many of whom are caught in a revolving door of return visits to hospital emergency departments. Twenty years ago, A Vision for Change promised a system built around strong community services, crisis teams, rehabilitation and recovery teams and humane therapeutic responses to those in severe distress. It envisaged agile, well-staffed crisis services, community supports and alternatives to hospital admission in order that emergency departments would no longer be the default for people in acute distress. These supports were only partially delivered. Too many people have fallen through the cracks in the meantime.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this very important motion. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it because it goes to the heart of one of the most serious failings in our mental health system, namely how we treat people when they are in deepest crisis. The Mental Health Commission’s report on acute mental healthcare in hospital emergency departments painted a harrowing picture of adults and young people arriving in hospitals in terrible distress and then being left for many hours in noisy and chaotic settings that were never designed to be therapeutic environments. This was a harrowing but all-too-familiar and all-too-normalised picture. More than 50,000 people who are in the midst of a mental health crisis present to emergency departments each year. Many hospitals still lack appropriate assessment spaces.”
“Unfortunately Sharing the Vision did not include the same kinds of benchmarks, but that is the least we can expect. I hope the Minister of State will direct some criticism back to the HSE that it could not provide that basic information today. All it would take is an email to middle management to find that out.”
“The lack of adequate psychology staffing in older adult mental health teams represents a failure to meet the complexity of mental health needs of people in later life. It is also a failure by Government to meet wider obligations including under the UNCRPD, which emphasises access to appropriate mental health supports across the lifespan and the right to live in one's community with autonomy. Psychologists play a unique role in later life services supporting people to cope with ageing, loss, disability and cognitive decline. They work with families and carers reducing distress and behavioural symptoms, and helping people to remain autonomous for long as possible. My question is simple: what concrete steps is the Department taking to ensure that older adult mental health teams are staffed to the benchmarks that were established in 2006?”
“The Mental Health Commission's latest annual electroconvulsive therapy activity report, which shows that in 2024 older adults formed a significant part of the population receiving ECT and the average age of a person receiving it has increased to 64, is also of great concern. There is also a well-established increased risk of unnecessary A and E admissions in older adults who are experiencing mental health difficulties. If we are serious about dignity, autonomy and quality of care for older adults, psychology cannot be seen as an optional add-on or a threadbare support.”
“I thank the Minister of State for following up that data. I do not doubt her bona fides in this area at all but it is not credible that the HSE would not have that data to hand. It is very basic. The importance of psychology as a core part of older adult mental health teams is long established Government policy. A Vision for Change in 2006 was explicit that older adult mental health services must be delivered through fully resourced multidisciplinary teams with psychology as a core part. That principle was reaffirmed in Sharing the Vision, which again recognised the essential role of psychology assessment and intervention for older adults. The failure to meet a benchmark that is 20 years old leaves older adults more reliant on medication and more at risk of physical health issues associated with declining mental health.”
“I am asking for the number of approved psychology posts, per population, in older adult mental health teams across each health region and for the Minister to indicate whether there are integrated health areas that currently do not have approved psychology posts for older adult mental health teams. To be clear, I am not just asking about vacancies where there has been an attempt to recruit but where a post has not actually been approved to be advertised.”
“This was despite residents receiving many reference numbers for requests they made to Uisce Éireann's Kafkaesque online system for tankers. There were two days on which bottled water was not supplied to homes. Some of the considerable distress this caused could easily have been addressed even if the repairs were always going to take as long as they did. Knockane, Castlemartyr is one of many examples from around the country where Uisce Éireann's cold faceless bureaucracy is failing people at the most basic level. Its problems are not the fault of its ground workers. There is a dramatic gap in accountability, transparency, accessibility and basic functioning in Uisce Éireann that the Government needs to address urgently.”
“One family was in a very vulnerable situation. They have a young child with a medical condition who was recently discharged from hospital. They were left stranded throughout that time. Over those ten days or so, my office was calling on Uisce Éireann to supply water tankers and to give clear updates on the state of repairs. I am sure other local public representatives were also advocating for the families affected. Despite that level of representation, the family I mentioned had to take to the airwaves six days into the outage, on Christmas Eve, to highlight their situation. The family were at pains to emphasise that the ground workers with Uisce Éireann were working very hard to resolve the issue and were compassionate and very receptive to them. However, no water tanker was supplied at any stage during that ten-day period.”
“We could spend all day every day discussing the dysfunction of Uisce Éireann and the many forms it takes. In the brief time I have, I will share a vignette of that dysfunction and its impact on people with reference to Knockane, Castlemartyr, County Cork. It is a townland in east Cork in my own constituency where there was an outage over Christmas that affected just eight households. This situation is replicated throughout the country. A small number of families was involved but the impact at that time of year was prolonged and severe. This outage occurred on 19 December and lasted until 28 December. The residents had no running water at all during that time. I am informed the problem relates to an antiquated pipe that needs replacement. Outages were occurring frequently in this townland as far back as September.”
“They no doubt raised expectations and they increased risk yet when the crackdown continued, that show of solidarity failed to materialise in any meaningful way and that failure amounted to reckless neglect, leaving peaceful protesters exposed to extreme violence after being urged forward without protection, backing or consequence for those responsible. In international debates we must be crystal clear and morally consistent. We must always stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and defend their rights under international law. They have been subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing and ever escalating cycles of state terror by the Israeli regime. However, support by the Iranian state for Palestinian causes does not absolve it of any responsibility for its actions against its own citizens.”
“Her detention became emblematic of a system in which human beings are treated as bargaining chips, with her freedom finally secured only after a long-standing £400 million UK-Iran debt being resolved. Other detainees have never re-emerged from the regime's squalid and brutal prison system. Their plight, without due process, transparency or contact with loved ones, lays bare the regime's profound contempt for human dignity, the rule of law and international norms. It is also important to acknowledge the role played and the responsibility borne by international actors. The US President, Donald Trump, publicly encouraged Iranian protesters to come out onto the street, assuring them of international support. Those words carried weight.”
“The response of the Iranian regime to peaceful dissent has been a savage campaign of state terror and a bloodbath designed to quell any further appetite for protest. Demonstrations have been met with arbitrary detentions, torture and mass killing. Judicial proceedings have taken place which are, essentially, a wholesale denial of due process. We also cannot forget the many people who have been abducted and detained for years in appalling nightmarish conditions by the Iranian state, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and other western nationals who have been held as political hostages and used as leverage in international disputes. Nazanin was only released in 2022 after almost six years of agonising separation from her young daughter and husband.”
“I want to use my time today to express my deep respect and admiration for the peaceful protesters who took to the streets in Iran in recent weeks. They are ordinary citizens who have shown remarkable courage in standing up to tyranny, repression and extreme state violence. These are people who protested knowing the cost. They protested facing a terrifyingly high risk of imprisonment, torture and death. Yet they persisted with dignity and an unyielding demand for freedom, equality and basic human rights. Their struggle is a rejection of tyranny and of a system of entrenched patriarchal oppression that has for decades denied women autonomy over their bodies or access to basic freedoms, and has persecuted and murdered people from the LGBT community just for who they are.”
“The legislation must be strengthened to include guiding principles, enforceable standards, safeguarding obligations, access to independent advocacy and accountability mechanisms. If we fail to do so, we risk regulating the process of home care without really protecting the people who rely on it. This would be a serious missed opportunity and one we should not allow pass.”
“We already recognise the necessity of independent advocacy in nursing homes and disability services. The Department of Health's own safeguarding policy confirms its importance. There is no credible reason why people receiving care in their homes should have fewer protections. The Bill lacks guiding principles. The Law Reform Commission has been clear that principles matter because they shape how statutory powers are exercised. Accountability in particular must be explicit for providers and individuals within organisations, for their actions and interventions. This is especially important where care is provided to people in vulnerable circumstances out of public view. Registration and inspection are necessary and welcome but they are not sufficient.”
“Questions therefore arise such as who signs the contract, who receives information and who can raise concerns? These are safeguarding issues, yet the Bill does not address them. The Law Reform Commission's recent work on adult safeguarding informed by national safeguarding standards provides a clear framework that should be reflected in this legislation. While the Bill provides for complaints procedures, complaints are only one part of safeguarding. There must also be statutory provision for the recognition and reporting of safeguarding concerns, appropriate information sharing, the appointment of safeguarding officers and the mandatory training of staff on human rights and respect for will and preferences. Crucially, the Bill makes no provision for access to independent advocacy.”
“This is positive but regulations alone are not enough. There must be a clear statutory requirement that home care is delivered through a rights-based approach, one that not only considers needs but the outcomes desired by the person receiving care. The Bill is also silent on contracts for care. There is no legislative requirement for a written agreement that protects autonomy and independence and safeguards against financial abuse. This is despite the fact that contracts for care in nursing homes are already subject to oversight under consumer protection legislation. There is no justification for a lower standard simply because care is delivered in the home. Safeguarding is another critical gap. Many recipients of home support lack decision-making capacity and may have no family or informal supports.”
“The Bill does not set out the scope of home care, the professional duties owed to care recipients, or the safeguards required when care is delivered to people who may lack decision-making capacity. This omission is particularly striking, given the extensive work already done in this area. As far back as 2011, the Law Reform Commission in its report on the legal aspects of professional home care identified key principles that should inform any legislative framework. These include independent living, privacy and dignity, quality of care and the protection of adults receiving professional home care. These principles are not adequately contained in this Bill. Section 21 of the Bill allows for regulations concerning needs assessments, the care, welfare and well-being of service users and the preparation of support plans.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on the home support providers Bill. It is long overdue, as my colleague Deputy Gibney said, that there is a statutory scheme for the registration and inspection of home support providers. Regulation and oversight are essential, particularly where care is delivered behind closed doors in people's private homes and to people in vulnerable circumstances. This Bill establishes a process for registration and inspection but it is largely silent on the principles, standards and obligations that should underpin the delivery of professional care in a person's home. That silence is not a technical oversight. It is a substantive gap, and it needs to be addressed.”
“These are not outliers because HSE senior management is actually removing outliers from parliamentary question responses. Despite the chronic under-resourcing of primary care services by successive Governments, the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, states the solution is about a single point of access and not staffing thresholds. I support a single point of access but we have to staff services. Thousands of families are being failed. When are we going to establish staffing benchmarks for primary care services based on population size in each health region? When is the Government going to undertake the necessary recruitment?”
“When the staggering waiting lists for primary care services for young people were first raised by my party leader, Deputy Holly Cairns, in July 2024, the then Taoiseach, Deputy Simon Harris, suggested the crisis was confined to psychology and the Cork–Kerry area. I have looked into this in depth over the past year and it is clear that the crisis is across disciplines and affecting every health region. The longest waiting time for physiotherapy is in Laois–Offaly, at six and a half years. The longest for occupational therapy is in Louth–Meath, at nine years. The longest for psychology is in Dublin city and west, at an incredible 11 years. The longest for speech and language therapy is in Dublin north-west, at almost six years.”
“It is difficult to do justice to the stress, worry and sense of betrayal that this has caused them. The health committee wrote to the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, before Christmas asking that she extend special Covid leave with pay for six months to give time for proper consideration by the Department of Social Protection of long Covid as an occupational injury. I am urging the Taoiseach to intervene between those two Departments on this issue.”
“It is not clear how the Department of Social Protection decided that long Covid is not worthy of classification as an occupational injury for healthcare workers who had been in receipt of special Covid leave with pay until 31 December and how the Department of Health informed that decision. A group of these workers met the Taoiseach in Cork in June. As I have said here before, they felt he gave them a lot of time, showed genuine empathy and concern for their situation and, critically, that he validated the seriousness of their symptoms and the fact that they had contracted Covid in the workplace yet nothing has been done for them since. They are now on standard sick leave which will run out in three months and ultimately they are on a pathway to retirement on medical grounds.”
“The Department has excellent officials who want to enhance existing Local Link routes sand develop new ones but they are prevented from doing so by the Department of public expenditure. The public want Local Link in east Cork, the Department of Transport wants it and local operators are keen to provide those services, yet the cold accounting of the Department of public expenditure says "No". That Department is neglecting its duty to the wider economy and society as a whole. This is a Fianna Fáil Ministry. Will the Taoiseach come down to east Cork and see for himself the level of need there?”
“The Taoiseach will be familiar with the fact that Local Link bus services have greatly improved mobility and quality of life in many rural communities. However, I ask him to visit east Cork where a Local Link service has not been developed and where the existing bus service is nothing short of an absolute shambles. In villages such as Ballycotton, Cloyne, Aghada and Saleen, residents may as well be living on a remote island when it comes to public transport. Not only that but they face entrenched traffic gridlock around the Lake view roundabout every morning and evening. I am aware the public service obligation for the Department of Transport is chronically underfunded.”
“We have a very haphazard pattern of disability services in different areas based, essentially, on a tradition of the service being in that territory. When is the Department going to provide data - even general data - on the distance between a disabled person's house and their community of origin? This is a human rights issue and data on it should be recorded.”
“I thank the Minister of State. The Minister said in a recent budget Estimate session that she wants to move away from private outsourcing but the proportion of money the Department is spending on these services has nearly doubled over the past four years. While the Minister is saying one thing, her Department's actions are the opposite. I can understand the ongoing reliance on these providers but this will not change as long as the Department is devoid of a plan for residential, vocational and community support services that are integrated with each other in each community. We need a service plan for disability akin to A Vision for Change. That document had key staffing targets per mental health service and per head of population.”
“We have a scenario where very wealthy private companies are amassing large sums of money with which they are building up significant property portfolios while section 38 and 39 services are struggling to keep the lights on and sometimes paying rent on properties. This is a disjointed, costly and reactive way to provide these services. When will the Government devise a national disability service plan that is implemented through multiannual funding and when will it move away from private outsourcing, which comes with such a human cost to the person with a disability as well as such a financial cost to the State?”
“I thank the Minister of State for her response. It is very concerning to hear of the rapidly increasing investment by her Department in privately outsourced residential services for people with disabilities. In many cases a person will move into such a service in the context of a crisis. The HSE will be under pressure to find any place for the person. The residential service they are offered will quite likely be located extremely far from home and sometimes in quite an isolated setting that is not joined up to community or other supports that would allow a person to grow towards increasing independence, connection and integration.”
“Has the Minister undertaken an equality and human rights impact assessment of the Department's practice of locating people with intellectual and similar disabilities in excess of 100 km from their home in residential services for prolonged periods of time? Will she comment on her Department's failure to maintain even broad-brush statistics on these distances given their clear breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, which enshrines the right of community living for people with a disability?”
“Her comments are part of an overall pattern of gaslighting that these workers have experienced in occupational health departments, as well as with some medical practitioners and now, unfortunately, this Government. It looks from this response like we cannot expect any degree of compassion or reason on this issue from the Minister of State's colleagues. I implore her to take this back to the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill. There is no justification for what is being done here.”
“They were caught up in clear outbreaks in healthcare settings while the rest of the country’s workers for the most part were able to work from home. There is a clear contradiction in the Government’s recognition of long Covid as occupationally acquired, demonstrated in its granting of special Covid leave with pay to date and its crude termination of that scheme at an arbitrary cut-off date of 31 December as these workers continue to experience significant disability arising from that condition. It was utterly callous, miserly and incoherent of Heather Humphreys to deprive these workers of a basic level of financial security as she sailed off into retirement on a gold-plated pension.”
“This was despite the fact that most European countries had done so, with the exception of Greece and Ireland, and despite the glaring contradiction of providing special Covid leave with pay to the cohort of workers I am speaking of on the basis that they contracted the virus at work. It was the then Minister's party leader at the time, Leo Varadkar, who dispensed with public health advice, opening the floodgates on the virus circulating through the community and infiltrating healthcare settings to an overwhelming degree in those dark weeks of late December 2020 and early January 2021. These workers are now living with the lasting impact of that. There is no doubt that these workers contracted Covid in the workplace.”
“It is despairing to receive that response. It is so completely out of touch with the reality of these workers' circumstances. There is no security that comes from being on standard sick leave. That is just a pathway to medical retirement. There is no rationale given as to why this basic financial support is being ripped away at this arbitrary cut-off date. The health condition of these workers has not changed. As social protection Minister in the previous Government, Heather Humphreys, according to reports from 2024, was vigorously opposed to making Covid an occupational illness, saying it would be impossible to determine whether someone had contracted the virus in the workplace.”
“It is heartless of the Government to cast these healthcare workers aside and rip away the one basic financial security they had, with no clear reasoning. I am asking that special Covid leave with pay be extended for six months to give time for a proper consideration of long Covid as an occupational injury for this cohort of healthcare workers.”
“This is huge financial stress on top of the many challenges they face every day just carrying out basic tasks. The Government keeps emphasising that it has extended the pay arrangement several times, as if the healthcare workers should be grateful, and that the hand of generosity can only extend so far instead of acknowledging that they sustained a serious workplace injury and should be compensated. Many were infected in early January 2021 following the so-called "meaningful Christmas" in which restrictions on movement were crudely lifted by the Government against public health expert advice. They were essentially cannon fodder in the context of that reckless decision, where many people died unnecessarily and these workers’ health and physical functioning suffered lasting damage.”
“Despite the sacrifices these healthcare workers made on all of our behalf, they have faced the loss of their financial security each year since becoming unwell as their unions have had to battle it out with the Department of Health in the WRC and the Labour Court. They have been on a cliff edge regarding their financial security as they approach the end of each term of the special Covid leave with pay. This has added a huge amount of additional stress to their lives. These workers now face the loss of their income a few days after Christmas this year, when they will be placed on the standard public service sick leave scheme. What this means in practice is healthcare workers, mostly women, having to retire in their 40s or 50s on medical grounds and some not being able to pay their mortgage as a result.”
“That is a level of physical depletion the average person just cannot imagine, for instance, being unable to lift a cup of tea after what most people would consider mild exertion or having to go back to bed with exhaustion after dropping their children to school. Long Covid typically involves a range of symptoms, including nerve pain, vertigo and brain fog, which have a major impact on a person’s capacity to work or carry out basic tasks. Treatments for long Covid are extremely limited and for some people their symptoms have not improved. I know this because I worked in such a clinic in Cork. The best we can hope for with treatments so far is, generally, the management of symptoms and not their alleviation or cure.”
“I raise a very important issue with the Minister of State. While I am grateful to her for being here, I am conscious that in her role she will not have decision-making capacity on it. It is disappointing not to see the Department of Health represented by either the senior Minister or a junior ministerial colleague. A cohort of healthcare workers has been in receipt of special Covid leave with pay, which is essentially their basic salary, over the past four to five years in recognition of the fact that they contracted the virus at the peak of the pandemic in high-risk settings such as hospital wards, often without adequate PPE, when much of the rest of the workforce was protected by working from home directives. They have paid an enormous price in the form of persistent long Covid symptoms such as debilitating post-exertional malaise.”
“This is akin to An Garda Síochána not sharing numbers of gardaí employed in a given division. The Department also will not give any information on recruitment campaigns being undertaken. Meanwhile, hedgerows and trees are being trashed with impunity and the whole idea of habitat protection looks more like a bad joke in this country. When are we going to see more transparency from the Department of heritage on staffing of the NPWS? When are we going to see those crucial roles in east Cork and Waterford filled?”
“We heard a lot during the last Government about how much more investment went into the National Parks and Wildlife Service but in east Cork and Waterford, the level of under-resourcing has been baffling. In east Cork, we have had no ranger for approximately 12 of the last 15 years. There has been no district conservation officer for 18 months and no regional manager in place for years over east Cork and Waterford. It is difficult to give precise figures for these vacancies, because the Department has been incredibly opaque in response to questions I have submitted on recruitment to the NPWS. In one response, the Minister referred to "perceived vacancies", as if we were all imagining those roles being vacant. Also, bizarrely, the Department will not give details of staffing by geographical area for "operational security reasons".”
“We need to see swift direct action by our local authorities with landlords who blight our streets with decaying properties and a much more urgent pursuit of derelict site levies. The collection of derelict site levies by Revenue is welcome, but why is the Government waiting until 2027 to implement this?”
“One of the most infuriating parts of the housing crisis is the tens of thousands of properties that have been left idle and decaying throughout the country. Youghal's potential to be on a par with Kinsale for economic prosperity and tourism has been thwarted by the epic scale of dereliction that has been allowed to take place there over many years. Likewise, Castlemartyr and Midleton have many prime-location properties left like deserted husks where boutiques could be flourishing or community hubs or accommodation created. In Holland or Germany this would not be tolerated. Landlords would have to sell up or repurpose a vacant property within a reasonable period or face losing it. The Government's softly-softly approach to vacancy and dereliction is clearly not working, and our towns and villages are haunted by this policy failure.”
“The council has been prevented from resurfacing the road because Uisce Éireann has yet to complete a water connection to an estate near the Lake View roundabout. Uisce Éireann is not engaging reasonably with Cork County Council on this matter. This is just another example of Uisce Éireann operating as a dysfunctional and unresponsive law unto itself. I urge the Taoiseach to take Government intervention on this.”
“Traffic congestion on the Whitegate to Midleton road has been like nothing on earth for months now. I know this well because I travel the road several times a week for a school trip. It is beyond frustrating for commuters to be left stewing in traffic as they are trying to get to work, school or crèche day-in, day-out. The road is at over capacity but the recent installation of traffic lights near the Lake View roundabout is the most recent factor in disrupting traffic flow. This is because the lights are operating on fixed intervals rather than responding to actual traffic flow. Cork County Council has installed fiber connections to facilitate more fluent traffic flow but these cannot be turned on until the road is resurfaced.”
“A group of these workers met the Taoiseach in Cork in June and felt he gave them a lot of time, showed genuine empathy and concern for their situation and, crucially, validated the seriousness of their symptoms and the fact that they had contracted Covid in the workplace. However, Ireland, with Greece, remains an outlier in Europe in not recognising long Covid as an occupational injury for the cohort in question. Can we extend the pay arrangement for six months while occupational injury status is properly explored?”
“A group of approximately 120 healthcare workers face the termination of their basic pay on 31 December. They have been receiving their basic pay in recognition of the fact that they contracted Covid at the peak of the pandemic in high-risk settings such as hospital wards and have paid an enormous price in the form of ongoing long Covid symptoms, including debilitating post-exertional malaise. While we will be looking forward to rest and leisure over the Christmas period, these healthcare workers face the loss of their financial security, not being able to pay their mortgages after using up their standard sick leave, and ultimately having to retire prematurely on medical grounds.”