Dear Minister Harris @SimonHarrisTD we need you to do the nation a favour, no a service. As no doubt you are aware, the death rates from #Coronavirusireland rises dramatically once all our available #ventilators are in use. Essentially once ventilators are topped out, people die.
That's what's happening in Italy now. Doctors have to decide who to save and who to let die. Here in Ireland we have about half the number of ventilators as in Italy per head of population. At this point discussions on closing schools, pubs, flights and all that is far too late.
Let's focus on what's coming down the line. We are on the same path as Italy, if not worse, and we need you to act. Medtronic in Galway are one of the biggest manufacturers of ventilators in the world. Ireland has given Medtronic a lot, all sorts of research and employment
subsidies and a low tax regime. We owe them nothing. So my suggestion, my request, is that you talk directly to them and ask them to make several hundred ventilators available to Ireland. I would like to draw a comparison with the famine in 1845/6/7 when Ireland exported
grain while people died of starvation, Trevelyan's corn as recalled in The fields of Athenry. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if people here were starved of oxygen while at the same time ventilators were exported? I don't think Medtronic would like to look back at such a tragedy either.
You did well to get Ireland over the thornyist of issues when you delivered on abortion. Now you have to deliver again, it's time to act. In just a matter of days it could, and most likely will be, too late. You need to go past the advice of officials.
This is a time to be radical. Going on the advice of Department officials now is dangerous. Nurses can be trained to do intubation in a relatively short time period. Officials being officials will tell you something official to cover their official arses.
No doubt Medtronic will tell you to get to the back of the queue. But you're the Minister and we need you to use every lever available to force them to look after their host country. We have failed to flatten the infection curve and we need to be honest about that.
Please act now Minister. Otherwise there will be unnecessary deaths. What a shameful tale it would make if the very thing we needed most was, like the grain in 1847, being exported?
