![\"\"](\"http:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/mcDonald.jpg\")
Mary Lou McDonald has called for a meeting of party leaders to discuss the threat posed by coronavirus.<\/p>\nMary Lou McDonald has called for a meeting of party leaders to discuss the threat posed by coronavirus.<\/p>\n
As the number of cases of Covid-19 in Ireland reached 19, the Sinn F\u00e9in leader said on Twitter that she has contacted Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to urgently convene talks on the outbreak.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Cabinet sub-committee will meet to set out measures to deal with the impact of the virus and consider strengthening employment protection laws.<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in health spokeswoman Louise O\u2019Reilly said the public are asking questions about coronavirus in constituency clinics across the country.<\/p>\n
She told RT\u00c9\u2019s The Week In Politics program: \u201cPeople need information, everybody wants to play their part but they need to know how to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also have a situation where we have a caretaker Government so we know that in all likelihood the people who are sitting around the Cabinet table won\u2019t be the same people who are going to be sitting around it in a couple of weeks\u2019 time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo all of the main parties need to be involved at a centralized level in this decision-making process because what we cannot afford is, when the government is formed, for those people in charge to take two weeks to read themselves into their brief \u2013 they need to hit the ground running.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a very, very serious public health issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also need the voice of working people at the table because workers are very concerned. In a time of a public health emergency sick pay actually becomes an issue of public health, not industrial relations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fine Gael\u2019s parliamentary party chairman Martin Heydon said the D\u00e1il will sit before its next scheduled date if emergency legislation needs to be passed to fast-track sick pay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no doubt we will act in unison on that and we will leave aside party politics to deal with what is a really serious threat,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we need to reassure and not to scaremonger. Important decisions that need to be made are being made with clinical advice of the Chief Medical Officer (Dr Tony Holohan), following the guidance of the World Health Organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s Jim O\u2019Callaghan called for the Department of Foreign Affairs to assess its travel advice after Italy restricted the movement of people living in its central and northern provinces.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201c(Italian) Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte made a decision that they were going to quarantine the northern part of Italy, in particular Lombardy, and they\u2019re told they can\u2019t travel outside that region.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet we still have flights coming into Dublin from northern Italy, so that\u2019s a development that needs to be looked at by the Government to see to what extent measures need to be put in place to restrain people travelling on public health grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senior Fianna F\u00e1il TD also said his party might have been \u201ctoo definitive\u201d in ruling out going into government with Sinn F\u00e9in.<\/p>\n
With the impact of the coronavirus putting a strain on government formation talks, Mr O\u2019Callaghan said he is not ruling anything out.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe said before the last election that we wouldn\u2019t go in with Sinn F\u00e9in, maybe we were too definitive about that but we said it and said the same about Fine Gael.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever I think we all need to get together to try to establish a government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not ruling in or out anything, but we need a government and we need a government promptly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think all party leaders should meet in respect of discussing government formation, we should be meeting to discuss a national agreed response to this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sunday Business Post has reported that health officials in Ireland fear 1.9 million people will fall ill with coronavirus, with 10% of them likely to need ICU care.<\/p>\n
The HSE responded by saying it cannot dispute the projections but also said that the modelling scenario has not been completed yet.<\/p>\n
People Before Profit TD Brid Smith said the number of ICU beds in Ireland is below the EU average.<\/p>\n
She told RT\u00c9: \u201cWe\u2019re in a big problem here and it has been said internationally that of all the countries across the EU, Ireland faces the biggest challenge because our health service is so underfunded and our nurses haven\u2019t been treated properly.\u201d<\/p>\n