From the noise, it's theCUBE covering Spark Summit East. Brought to you by Spark Summit. Now your hosts, Jeff Frick and George Gilbert. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are live in Midtown Manhattan at the Spark Summit East Show. I mean, 2,000 people, 3,000 people running around talking Spark, talking big data. Early stages in this conference. So it's a really interactive, engaging group and it's a really fun time to be part of it. We're happy to be here. We're joined by our next guest, Dirk DeRus, the Data Lake product strategy from IBM. Welcome Dirk. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So what do you think of the vibe of the show? You've been to this before? I have. It's definitely grown. One thing that strikes me about this conference, other than a lot of the other conferences I go to and I know you go to many of them as well, is how technical it is. And so you see, like a traditional IBM conference is very much focused on the more business oriented kind of user or like the CTO kind of that level of conversation. Whereas when you come here, it's different. Not that it's bad or good, it is what it is. So here you have people that are developers figuring out Scala or your statistician type of people or people call them data scientists today that are very much into programming R or even statistical Python work or people that are just thinking about how do I distribute workload more efficiently than in like old MapReduce, for instance. And so a lot of those business stories that we see at some other conferences, you don't see those as much here because it's much more, I mean the audience is obviously very different. Yeah, it's early days and it's really a lot of sharing of information, not only is the technology in the weeds, but the people that are executing at that level and I think we had a prior guest say, you know, you don't often see lines of code in a keynote presentation. No, especially the lead off presentation. Here you go. Well, so tell us, in our research, we talk about systems of intelligence and we talk about it as a journey, not as a destination. And that sort of first stage is doing something better, faster, cheaper than you used to do. The data lake, as opposed to the data warehouse. And it's not the exact same thing, we sort of data warehouse, plus, plus, minus, minus. You add structure later so you can do more iterative analysis, you know, project the compute on the data, whole bunch of things. How have you seen customers use that as a jumping off point for their journey, say, those who started several years ago versus those starting now? Yeah, for a lot of the customers that I've worked with, it's been a frustrating journey. So when we started talking about Hadoop, you know, five, six, seven years ago, and we've continued to have those kind of conversations about how to scale out, both in volume of data and then paralyze work and do all these magical things and have these insights come flying at you, that hasn't happened for nearly anyone. And a lot of that- For the original. Yeah, yeah. And even now, I mean, we're seeing, we're seeing kind of, I mean, there are success stories, but by and large, they're fairly limited. When I consider success, it comes back to, you know, the point I was making earlier about that, you know, business user that's comfortable with Excel spreadsheets or like a Tableau or Cognos type of reporting tool, like how are they able to take advantage of that scale, right? And so there's still, most of those people are still at the point where they're doing a lot of things manually and when it comes to the scale conversations, if I'm taking data from social or data outside my warehouse, integrating that into a warehouse or even having like a full body type of analysis where you're looking at multiple years of data, that's still not happening for that business user. So some of the original promises that have been, you know, talked about on a lot of PowerPoint slides and stuff like that, that still hasn't quite come to fruition. And so that's why, for me, what why Spark is interesting, because I mean, coming here, I mean, as a technical person, I appreciate, you know, the kind of the keynote that Mattai gave yesterday, you know, what is Spark 2, all that kind of stuff and some of the new things coming. But from the perspective of a business user, for me, I see Spark as plumbing. That's all, I mean, that is what it is. But it's special plumbing because it enables, eventually, once the rest of the software providers, like us included, once we've sort of figured out how to take advantage of that plumbing, we can do some pretty incredible things for the business user. So when I mentioned two-speed IT, the notion of being able to take, you know, many different kinds of data, shop for it, and then build data products in a more iterative way. So that's where I see this ultimately going in this notion of users search and shop. They might do some limited modeling or even playing around. And none of those users should not know what Spark is even. So where do you think the disconnect came between the PowerPoint slides promising the insight jumping out of the lake and the reality? Was it over-high vision? Were the tools not just ready? Was the expectations wrong? Are we finally getting there with Spark? I mean, why that disconnect? And are we finally going to get to the point where we bring those vision, you know, the vision and reality together? Yeah, I think the disconnect largely comes, I mean, it's like any hype cycle where people get very excited about something that is now possible that wasn't before. And so people maybe get ahead of themselves a little bit of thinking, well, if I suddenly do this with my transactional data, that kind of thing, then we could do all kinds of things. But then the questions that often get ignored in those early discussions are about governance, really. I mean, the various aspects of governance. I mean, especially when it comes to regulatory compliance. So there are, I mean, we deal with these companies all the time, your banks, airlines, retailers, and so on at a national or international scope. And they have very serious concerns and requirements to satisfy the regulators and privacy requirements and all the rest of it. And the fact is that a lot, one of these projects come out of open source or even emerging projects from non-open source companies, that governance philosophy isn't baked in at the heart. To be clear about governance, it's not just the lineage of the data, but it's like, so every transformation that happened on the data, it's the code that did it, so you can verify or audit it. That's right, and you can audit it. And so lineage is one element, security is one element. So imagine a problem where you have, like me, the customer, I go to a bank and I have my normal transactions and all that sort of thing, but I might also have a mortgage with the bank. I might also have some kind of other social engagement. I might call their call center. So information about me, the consumer, is spread all over the different warehouses in that bank. And so there are some regulatory requirements that require people to, they allow access to a lot of those individual pieces, but they do not allow people to synthesize them to build a full composite picture for various privacy requirements. And so technically that's a really, really hard problem to solve. And that's, I mean, when you're looking at the kind of plumbing type conversations, such as what this conference is focused on, which is the Spark Engine, MLive, and all that sort of thing, those engines, they're not about governance. They're about how to get work done. Yes, Spark doesn't help with that. No. So tell us perhaps the scope of the problems or what did customers who were successful with their early data lake journeys, what did they do? How did they approach the problem? Yeah, so where we have seen success stories is where there was a very specific problem and maybe it relates to scale, maybe it relates to one kind of set of data or maybe two sets of data that emerge together and people try to do some work at scale. And when there's a business problem tied to that, that's where we've seen success because then the investment is worthwhile and some of the engineering pain that's required to do things that are new or to learn new languages like Scala, for instance, or Java MapReduce, where that actually makes sense, where there's a return, where people can actually see how does this fit into kind of our greater business journey effectively. And so that's been successful. But in terms of what are the keys for greater success? What's going to make this stuff take off and actually deliver some of that transformative change that's been promised? Well, that has to, that starts and ends with a governance conversation. For instance, can the users, can the constituents of the data that require, reports being generated, questions being answered, all that sort of thing, are they able to be audited in a way that makes sense? Are they able to look at that lineage story that you just mentioned, that sort of thing? And when they're finding the ROI, where are some of the places they're finding the ROI that you see? We just hear repeatedly over and over and over the anti-churn message, right? It's like, all right already. And the false negatives. It's actually the false negatives. Or no, it's the false negatives actually that piss people off on the credit card transaction because I'm trying to buy something and you're not letting me do it because you think it's a foreign or a fraudulent claim. What are some of the other places when you talk about ROI that people can find some easy returns on some of these investments?  So, I mean, one we often come back to is the wind farm company that we work with in Denmark, Vestas. So they had a problem where they have all these wind farms and it costs a ton of money to install an individual windmill. And usually those windmills are installed in clusters, optimizing for wind patterns and all that sort of thing. And they have millions of centers around the world. So it's almost an early IoT kind of use case. But in order for them to accurately place the wind farms in optimal spots, because again, you make that decision once, right?  And so what Vestas was able to do with the Hadoop software that we sold them and helped them with, is basically grouped down from, you know, from like a square kilometer basis to almost, you know, like about 10 to 20 square meters, right? So they could have a far more precise indication of where their windmills need to go. On the placement of the windmill. Exactly. Before you even get into optimizing it once a thing is up and running. Precisely. And that optimization, that's another question, like how do we do preventative maintenance on these windmills? I mean, I remember as a kid driving over the hills going to California, and you see acres and acres of windmills and half of them aren't running. Aren't turning, yeah. Exactly where all of them all pass. The other example that comes up sometimes is really when you can start making economic decisions around, you know, do you over throttle the thing? Because right now the price of energy is high, even though it's going to impact your maintenance schedule. But you know, you can now make an economic decision versus making a pure decision based on no, you know, don't overrun it. It's going to cause us to have to bring the thing down earlier. So, and you said they have millions of sensors? Yeah, around the world. So they, yeah, they track like air, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, how many bursts of wind there are, because I mean, wind can be too intense for a windmill before it fails effectively. So there are all these factors that kind of go into the placement. And again, that granular, you know, the more specifically you can group that specific area down, you know, that means significant return. So that's a scale problem because all those sensors, but that data coming in, A, storing it, and B, being able to analyze it and calculate things, that's a big data problem. So then two customer sort of journey questions. The ones who do have this successful experience, what's their next stop on the customer journey? And then the ones who stall at the data lake, where do they go from there? Yeah, so as I mentioned before, it all stands and falls with, you know, what is the business problem that I'm trying to solve? I mean, I've gone into dozens, probably more customer engagements, where there's a team that's very excited about the next hype, the hype technology. And trying to, I mean, there's a bank actually, just two days ago, I met with, where they want to use Spark, but for web applications, and they want to figure out how do I fit the Spark kernel, the Spark engine, inside like a web servlet? That doesn't make sense, right? Just for kicks, they just want to try it out somewhere. They see Spark as a multi-purpose, they want to take advantage of it in memory, but that's not the point. The point is distributed workload larger scale, right? And so this notion of jumping on the latest type bandwagon is not always fruitful. So having, well, step one, recognizing what's possible now that wasn't before with whatever the technology is, like Spark, for instance, and there are lots of things that are possible now with Spark that weren't before. Especially when you look at statistical processing, being able to do those kind of algorithms and having the data explode in memory and being able to distribute that, that's enormous. And it almost hasn't been reported on enough, I find, like the potential that that has. And then what are the problems that are solved by this thing that wasn't possible before? Right, and then what are the solutions, right? And IBM's made a huge investment in Spark, continues to make a huge investment in Spark. So are you going into that bank and saying that's an interesting use case, maybe not the best, but oh, by the way, here's my portfolio of banking solutions that have integrated Spark or leveraged Spark for a better RRI. Yeah, and so that, I mean, your response and the question that you asked, how do people kind of overcome like this kind of miss or this unsatisfied hype kind of thing, is kind of where the conversation with the bank went. We asked, so why do you want to use Spark for these web applications? And then we said, their response was, well, we're kind of tied to IT, we want to be loose of that kind of back to the two-speed thing I mentioned initially. And we said, well, have you considered cloud? I mean, so we have, I mean, and us and others as well, have Spark offerings running on the cloud where you can use this technology in a setting that makes a lot more sense, where you don't have to embed it in a servlet, where it's just running and wasting a lot of resource, trying to paralyze things that can't be paralyzed because you're running in this tiny little container, but running it on our blue mix cloud, for example, and actually having a meaningful data set behind it that can scale out, well, that might be a viable option. And zero IT, it's really all about having the developers work on that. So when you look at the core requirements, sometimes these things flesh themselves out quite nicely. Yeah, well, I was going to say what's the last word, but I think, I don't know, you could do much better than that there. So thanks for stopping by, are you going to be at Interconnect? Oh no, we already had Scarlet. No, I'm not at Interconnect. You're off to Singapore. Yeah, a much longer flight than Vegas from here, but we'll save travels and thanks for stopping by theCUBE. Thank you for having me. Absolutely, I'm Jeff Frick. We are live in Midtown Manhattan at Spark Summit East. Thanks for watching. We'll be back with our next segment after this short break. Thanks. All right.


lready dreaming about the festive season so why not make a start park for free and enjoy your christmas shopping this year letter kenny shopping centre bringing you the time at now you're very welcome back to the program the time is just approaching 17 minutes past 11 and it's time now for our monday focus we're discussing domestic violence donagall recently launched a new resource pack called donagall domestic abuse resource pack for professionals working with children and families it was launched by the domestic abuse working group of the safe and secure committee of donagall children and young persons service committee we're joined in studio by three guests today firstly we'll say a good morning to superintendent gretty sherdon thank you very much for joining us it's good to have you with us also a regular guest on the program dr mary hainsworth manager of the donagall domestic violence services good morning to you morning great and also we're joined by inspector shivan mollahan if i have the pronunciation correct yeah you have it there okay listen thank you very much all of you right um i suppose shall we we start with you gretty i suppose the important thing some of the important information to get out there is that the services are there the help is there and and and for people to engage with them that's correct and i'm supposed to start off to say what domestic abuse is greg and for the listeners that it's physical sexual financial emotional or psychological abuse of one person by another within a family environment or by a current or previous intimate partner and it occurs regardless of socioeconomic group race religion gender or sexuality so it like we see it it's occurring across all walks of life all ages all status in society so here the guardian donagall and ireland have attended domestic instance on a daily basis overwhelmingly the most common type of call we attend to is when a woman is being abused by their male partner past or present however men can also be subject to domestic abuse and there's you know they don't report as much it appears children homes where domestic abuse experience this domestic abuse also can be present in the shape of abuse of older or vulnerable persons by their carers partners or relatives there's diversity among victims the abuse we see varies from low level and persistent abuse to short and extreme abuse and we are mindful of the escalate the of escalating abuse within society and I suppose we recall incidents on a regular basis you know even the weekend past again a number of domestic incidents so that's just to give a brief outline to domestic and is there sort of a typical typical example of those calls is it a dispute and a property or something and someone will call in an emergency situation or is there a it could be just a simple sometimes it may be a neighbour ringing in about you know here and maybe a domestic next door and it may be it may have escalated a physical violence at that stage yeah and of course that is counted in statistics but it's not going to be newspapers or in the community guard or slot but it doesn't mean it's not going on and you've said quite clearly it happens very regularly oh it's it's it's worrying you know how often it happens and we don't hear about it all but it's certainly it's going on across all elements of society because of course abuse can be ongoing all the the types of abuse you've mentioned there that and it might be just in a in a one occasion that that phone call is made that doesn't mean it only is happening on that in that one occasion yeah often when a victim actually makes the decision to contact the guards things have come to like you know like to a point where they can't cope anymore and up until that they've experienced the research would indicate they may have experienced over 30 incidents of domestic violence at that stage before they actually have the courage then to ring and look for help this is a purposely leading question how seriously do the guardie take domestic violence and these types of calls if anyone's listening and going I'm sure what's the point you know it might take them hours to get out here and at that stage and do you want to talk a little bit about the resort the attitude towards it from ungodly shukana and the resources and how they're deployed when needed domestic violence at the moment is at the the forefront of our policing needs from the commissioner down to ground level there is you know a vested interest in investigating domestic violence incidents all guardia staff guardia members from commissioner level down to ground level have undertaken online training in relation to domestic violence we have our own protected services units been set up across the country and one here in dunigol also where we have staff trained in relation to domestic violence and we have domestic violence champions across each of the districts also so certainly there's manufacturers to domestic violence and we we would encourage anybody listening today who has a victim or who suspects that they know someday that may be a victim to contact the guards and at the very least Stephen to get advice in relation to what's going on and we've talked about this on a number of occasions in this program there is procedures and ways of dealing with these issues as well once contact is made isn't there and you know is it around anonymity and things like that there and guardia understanding that maybe someone has someone watching their movements very closely or whatever I mean that's all thought through and there's plans in place for that yeah absolutely and at the end of the day even if they contact the guards it's not always that there has to be a prosecution the thing is that they actually look for help and then we can point them in the right direction to the likes of Marie and her team or to others services that are out there like I mean we would never put anybody under pressure to make statements or complain to us that's the priority is to get them to make sure that the victim and if there's children or anybody else involved that they're actually that they can feel safe in their home so one cold does not necessarily trigger a train of events there's processes and procedures and options and all that type of stuff yeah and there's loads of support and the only reason I'm emphasizing that is because it could be a barrier to someone ringing but that doesn't that's not there so what we're going to say that I was just going to say like you know you don't have to you don't have to to leave to be supported you know it doesn't mean you don't have to leave your family hope to be supported so there's there's Siobhan do you want to talk about this domestic abuse resource pack yeah so this was launched in October and as part of social inclusion week in Donegal myself and Marie are on the CIPSE Safe and Secure subcommittee and I suppose it was launched as a resource from our working group which included the Donegal domestic violence services and the Donegal women's centre the MACE project and the St Johnston and Carrigan's family resource centre and Toosla and I suppose it's a road map really for professionals or people who may come across people who are experiencing domestic abuse you can see yourself in details all the services that are available from the guards Toosla the sexual assault treatment unit and Donegal domestic violence services and also importantly the signs and symptoms I suppose of domestic abuse and what to look out for you know and coercive control and just in relation to that is really really quite it's interesting because you know there might be people that pick this up and would read through the type of domestic abuse and not realise that they might actually be in an abusive relationship yeah very definitely I mean we see people who don't realise they're being abused themselves and sometimes even though it can be visible to people outside that person could be traumatised and they could be suffering from trauma and not realise that they actually are a victim they make that connection yeah so maybe a friend or a family member if you know if they come across somebody like that just to see what's available see what the signs are and talk to them support their friend and refer them to the services as necessary there's also interesting information as it relates to terms you know domestic abuse terms and phrases because you know lots of people maybe hearing more coercive control lately over the last couple of years but might not know precisely what that is or what's you know if something's happening to them on a financial or social level I mean that's all laid out quite simply there in this documentation as well yeah and it's available online for anybody at www.sipc.ie.cypsc.ie and there's also hard copies available if you want to contact myself at letter Kenny Garda station or Marie or Anne Timoney me and the Sipsy coordinator as well yeah and as you were outlining too in this booklet as well it's what happens when you make contact what happens next too that's all contained within it Dr Marie Haynesworth your manager of the Donegal Domestic Violence Services I mean we speak on a regular basis don't we about this and also to maybe resource issues in you helping people what is the situation now from your perspective in terms of you know the tools you have to hand to help people when they reach out or refer yeah I mean obviously the last couple of years has been particularly difficult because of the COVID you know and access to resources has been a little bit more challenging but the biggest challenge facing us at the moment is accommodation because that's it is a national crisis in terms of housing but particularly in Donegal there is an extreme shortage of properties and even though during COVID they announced the rent supplement you probably saw that where someone who is fleeing a domestic abuse relationship is no longer needs to be means tested in order to get the rent allowance the problem is you still need a house to flee to and that's our biggest hurdle at the moment people often you know often the guards are called out to a situation we want to make it as safe as possible for the people who are being abused and often the only way to do that is to provide them with some additional accommodation and that's where we're meeting difficulties what can be done about that because obviously there's a lot of people competing for properties and houses aren't they they're not competing but you know a lot of drain on unlimited resources and the bottom line is I mean the Department of Environment needs to be providing more social housing because that's where that we're aligned too much I think on the private rental market which was never designed you know to compete with social housing and it's because of the lack of social housing you've got a lot of people looking for rental properties and the rental properties are going up like they're now hitting over a thousand a month which you know that's almost like a hundred percent increase in the last three or four years so there's a lot of people who are accessing the hat payment rental allowance or on social welfare they just can't they're being moved out of that rental market so it's not even a stand-in for social housing anymore and at the moment like luckily drawing COVID Tisla have up fronted some of the payments around emergency accommodation we've had to use hotels B and Bs but that funding will all stop next year local authority isn't paying it because their department says that they're not responsible for domestic violence homelessness and to start only providing funding through refuges they don't do informal so we're going to be stuck shortly we need a short medium and a long-term plan this you can't with with the difficult job that's already being done we can't just keep firefighting every problem we need a plan don't we we do and it's no good having guards going out to a situation and then looking to move people on and then there's nowhere to move them on too so like there's a huge dependency there that we can provide hotel accommodation to back up their work and that's been fine over the last year but it's next year that we're worried about you know what happens then yeah and is there anything we can do like is there any like implore the public if they've got a property available to make it available I don't know is that realistic I mean how do we we have had offers and I know people are obviously out there you know they have to meet all the requirements and stuff and people have offered properties the problem is the cost of it who pays because at the end of the day nobody's going to offer property for free if we have got access to the property that's great but then we need the backup of state authorities to give us the funding to pay the landlords and that's in the absence of no social housing so that's really where we need the lobbying we need it lobbying that hat payments aren't enough you know they're not meeting that shortfall and I know the homeless sector is involved in that but we also need people to lobby that we need additional funding you know in terms of housing specifically yeah it needs specific focus you know I got you now let's talk about the 16 days campaign launch which is taking place on the 23rd I don't know which one of you want to speak to that is it Marie I think yeah we are organised as it starts on the 25th but we're actually I suppose hijacking the launch of the resource pack which is also happening again Sipsy have a launch on the 23rd so we're actually as part of our 16 days we work with young people I think some of the youth reach services and some of the schools in Lederkenny have produced artwork on the back of the healthy relationships program that we do and we want to use I suppose this forum to publicly show it because it's quite hard with Covid we couldn't do anything last year it was all online so this year we're looking to do it at the Angrenian hotel looking burnt it's important there's a conversation awareness and education of our young people isn't there so you know we try and stop the conveyor belt of people that believe it's okay to treat other people like this that it's in some way acceptable that it's positive or constructive yeah the conversation on you know just respect within relationships and healthy relationships which impacts on everything it's not just domestic abuse it's bullying it's all the rest of it but it is that notion that yeah how you treat other people is important that we can challenge negative stereotypes or negative behaviours at an early stage so I think the artwork has been a good way that people have kind of thought about the issue and put it across in a way that other people you know sometimes visually it says a lot more than written statements or people talking about it all the time yeah because Gretty obviously we've been talking about the guard of response ideally we want to get to a space where we're stopping this sort of behaviour ever starting yeah and I suppose on that and as I alluded earlier you know this abuse has taken across has taken place across all age groups so there are teenage and young boys and girls who are currently victims of domestic violence you know in their own relationships and again it's just creating that awareness and understanding that you know that that type of behaviour is unacceptable and and again it's between ourselves and the guard she kind of do and work with the schools and do and work with families and other I suppose like say the likes of hairdressers or taxi drivers people that are out and about that are going to be interacting with young and old people if there's an opportunity to get information in relation to or give information in relation to the services available to victims of domestic violence that's what we can do that as well but yeah it's just it's to start the conversation I think to start the conversation the conversation has started but I think it's to spread the conversation that and it's not just happening behind closed doors sometimes it's happening blatantly in the public we're probably likely the financial control and the coercive control but again it's just that the young people and the old people across the board that everybody's aware because maybe quite naively someone like myself might have hoped that you know that the conversation we were having for instance about you know coercive control being a crime we had one of the first convictions we had the first convictions I think without a trial here in in in Donegal and then those subsequent convictions down the country has that led to more awareness or is it more detections or more instances you know what I mean because sometimes when we see an increase in figures is it happening more often or are people sort of saying right you know I can contact the Guardian about this what's happening to me is a crime not just in that area but in domestic abuse generally I wonder I do think certainly the legislation change and the media you know awareness I've created around that certainly escalated I suppose our protected services units have been established there's more awareness across all all agencies and there's more interagency work going on and I think people are maybe more aware there's more information available online in relation to the matter so they are coming forward and we do have you know families work colleagues neighbours you know like reporting in as well in relation to you know concerns they have so I think there is more talk about it but you know I'm worrying about the people that are not engaged in because you know they are Can we talk about that and I don't know which one of you might prefer to but someone who's listening who feels there are trapped in in in an abusive relationship fearing that it's only a matter of time before it escalates who do they reach out to at this point is it the guards Siobhan certainly yes I mean in an emergency situation obviously you call 999 straight away if you really are in fear but if you want just to make a phone call to your local station all the district headquarters are 24 hours a day just to see what your options are or any of the support services like the Donegal domestic violence services Can I just talk talk on that and this is I'm not trying to say anything negative about the guardie but there might be a historic attitude that may be this is seen as something that can be fixed in the house or you know what I mean or not taking it seriously or whatever I mean I have heard stories of that historically things have changed now in terms of how those calls are dealt with what actions are triggered people being trained to deal specifically with this type of of instant I just want to focus specifically on how that's perhaps wherever a problem has changed now yeah well I mean domestic abuse it's a top priority for all guardie across the country and when we receive a report or we go to somebody's house and we deal with them we do a call back with that victim within a week so that call back is can be in person or by a method chosen by the victim for example by email or by phone call whatever suits them but during that call back I mean we'll be asking them certain questions to risk assess their safety will help them safety plan if they need to do that maybe to escape a violent relationship we'll give them information on the barring order safety order whatever you know option they want to take and as superintendent Sheridan said they maybe that they want to maintain the relationship but just give them to support maybe they should get a safety order to ensure the protection there and then in the house and they can call us then and if we become aware of a breach of an order we are duty bound to arrest that person and bring them excuse me before the court so there is that but just generally information but as I said it's a top priority matter for us and not only do we call back within a week we also call back within a month and three months again okay and during that time all the time we're hoping to build up a relationship you know convey trust to the victim that they'll be able to tell us and if they want to get involved in the criminal justice process that they'll feel confident to do that yeah and I suppose that's superintendent it's your role to make sure that's resourced and is actioned upon yeah well I suppose like there's four districts in Donegal so you have Boncran, Letter County Mulford and Body Shannon so I suppose really like there's vested interest and from our chiefs the superintendent Terry McGinn like there's a vested interest across the across the county to you know support victims to domestic violence and you know the families and the the children have to be conscious the the children that are experienced and that you know they may be lying in their beds but they're still experienced you know they're still exposed to domestic violence so like there's definitely support across the whole organisation to police it and that's also addressed Siobhan isn't it in the the pack here the impact it can have on children and signs and signals there and one thing also that's written across every page that's been mentioned in an emergency it's your ring one one two isn't it nine nine nine what do we need to be doing more of you talked about I suppose you know Marie about when you are trying to help people but to try and break the cycle or something and it seems a repetitive conversation how do we start making in Rose what do we do to actually say this is completely unacceptable behaviour it has to stop you know I know people probably texting in going and it was already referenced early you know men get abused too that's been accepted but not how do we get past them and us that we see as a whole society problem regardless of a gender of gender sorry and that we all play our role in it's so avoidable like it is I think one of the things about domestic abuse and why it does get so gendered is because it does play on the dynamics of gender you know and it plays a lot on the traditional roles so it becomes quite easy for one partner to suppress another just because of the society and so they're the kind of things that we need to start challenging early enough you know that there's no you know the gender stereotyping of young children that girls are expected to do this boys are expected to do that until we have more general conversations around equality and acceptance you know these attitudes will continue to prevail and that's that's unfortunate you know even within you know the different agencies domestic abuse is quite a complex crime so you know there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes to you know raise awareness around what is high risk what is low risk you know when someone you know often guards are called out to a situation that has perhaps de-escalated by the time they get there so how do you review a crime scene how do you review who says what how do you take evidence from client you know from victims so all of that kind of education is also ongoing with agencies and that was part of the thinking with the resource pack that agencies need to be up skilled a bit in terms of dealing with domestic abuse and then we can begin to filter that conversation down and if in the meantime we're having more conversations around equality and you know just engaging with other people and healthy relationships so it's kind of different pronged you can't do it all at once you know it's not a simple solution but I think you know what's positive and certainly ventures like this show that there is that communication there is that willingness you know the guards also have an interagency forum that we feed into where they are now reviewing their risk assessment tool you know bringing forward cases it takes time but that's the kind of work that needs to be done you know we do need to work collaboratively we can't all do it as one agency Inspector how do people get hold of this this book I mean they might not want it in the house for for obvious reasons are in the car you talked about it being available digitally as well or how do people so it's on the CIPSE website okay if you go on to the Donnie Gold page of www.CYPSC.ie and there's a link to it there on the page and we hope to also get a link on the Garda website as well but it is available in hard copy if you if you want it I'm sure Karani you'll have a link done on the the Lunagolf Facebook page too it's not though it is both professionals so you know I don't I would expect people to have it in their car right okay sorry if this is specific for professionals because I actually thought it looked really quite useful for the general population as well but we kind of thought maybe there was a lot of information and it might be too much for somebody who just you know we don't want to overwhelm people but the idea is that people working and coming across people okay I guess you're right that might have it and so that was the emphasis but you know we would like to see it around and about yeah I get you okay but definitely if you're involved in professionally in anything in this area you need to get your hands on this as well okay so it's just so well laid out I've presumed that it was for it's very useful okay and I think that you want to I was just going to say Greg on that like we do provide information packs to victims okay the guards when we call back to them within the seven days of an incident happening but the packs you know we say professionals but it's really anybody who is you know in a position a professional should have it yeah but like we generally we generally can choose to have a look but it'd be worth what a bit of professional should have that show we're talking hairdressers beauticians locksmiths you know like across the board any taxi drivers shopkeepers people that are interacting with people were looking to get involved like that do you know sort of to see something and say right I'm spotting something here there's red flags here that have read in this I'm going to contact the guards the people will be but I know it's about that should they be they shouldn't be but they may be but we as a part of our plan are going to go going forward are going to do briefings with people working in the community we're going to start in January with hairdressers and we're going to go from there just create an awareness and start the conversation again and again like I mean when we get these presentations like we will know if there's somebody in the audience that has as a victim you know they're presenting to work every day and we don't know what's happening behind closed doors you know and that goes across the board with every profession whether it's the guards the hairdressers somebody working on the hospital like we just nobody knows what's going on back home in closed doors okay and one of the things I think yes we do the trade in that people say is that they're worried about not making the situation worse? Do we say something that that will alienate the person or you know and I suppose the message we're putting out there it doesn't really matter like you know who it is that you're working with you're just having a conversation you know we're not asking you say anything you know highly you're not going to upset somebody you're just asking questions just making it routine just giving them a bit of information that's all you have to do you know so it's maybe that's another piece it's about breaking down what domestic abuse is it is a big issue and complex at one level but each little step can make a big difference yeah I get you it's important information anything else that you want to add? I suppose just for for victims who are at home listening today or who people that might think they know somebody that's a victim just to maybe you know to keep a record of what's happening within the home environment you know they can do it discreetly there's an online app called Bright Sky yeah that's that's we talked about that in the past that's quite useful for recording as well and stuff isn't it? yeah and that's and that's it's an excellent tool but but just if they can record notes because sometimes you'll find victims find that they might you know they'll they'll find they're losing their marbles because you know whereas if they're writing things down and maybe from one week to the next they're forgetting what happened because it may be because it requires control and somebody negatively influencing their thoughts and again like that if there's any witnesses to incidents just to keep records of that as well and that will all you know if they do ever get the courage then to come forward to the garrison at least they'll have a diary of events that have happened up until that okay you mentioned the out there bright because the last time we talked about this we've got quite a few calls afterwards people wondering where it's from it's bright sky Ireland it's available to download on the App Store FryOS or Google Play for for Android Siobhan anything you want to add before we wrap up? yeah I just want to add in relation to the sexual assault treatment unit yes for people that are experienced sexual abuse in their relationships or indeed on a one-off occasion that it is a free and a confidential service and it's available to all genders and they carry out at the statue they carry out medical legal examination and depending on the time frame of when the incident would have happened but they also provide health care and treatment of injuries and sexual health screening cervical screening and they would refer on to specialised services and cancelling services when required and I know that they have reported approximately an increase of 20% of people being victims of intimate partner violence attending to the statue services so and you know the information is in the booklet but it's online if you google and the number there for the statue 24-hour service as well okay right so and just finally to focus on the professional side of things I don't want to in any way muddy the water is the domestic abuse resource pack if there is a hairdresser's taxi or people that work with them any professional organisation like that that want to distribute it to the staff even I don't know how do they get hold of this pack either physically or online I'm sorry to repeat myself but I know people will call in afterwards asking again maybe perhaps try and put some of these in the the major guard of our stations because that's probably the place that people profess they may not know where the Sipsy office is or anywhere else so maybe well what Sipsy is so you know so the better the access the better so we can get it out to the communities and just to say as well our own resource line you know the help line is available not just for victims but for people who want information and support so again professionals can access that in order to get information and we also have copies of the resource pack that we can get out to people okay listen thank you very much all of you for calling in I really appreciate it you've been hearing from Superintendent Gretty Sheridan Inspector Siobhan Molochan and Dr Marie Haynes worth who's manager of the Donegal Domestic Violence Services if you need any numbers any clarification on any information there if you want to contact Marie even in terms of you know available accommodation anything like that at all or contact us our number is<PHONE_NUMBER> as well and we can pass that on because you might be very familiar with ours and we can sign post you to all what we've been talking about so far okay we'll be back with more 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call<PHONE_NUMBER> T's and C's apply It's the perfect Christmas gift a ticket to the Remembering Joe show starring Ben Dolan and the Dolan family with the original Joe Dolan band at the Mount Aragile Hotel Letter Kenny on Tuesday December 28th booked now at the Mount Aragile 074912700 Throughout Ireland change is happening Together we can build a community of support to empower those living with dementia Highland Radio Proud to support dementia understand together Brought to you by the HSC Highland Radio Weather Updates with the National Fuels Pierce Road Letter Kenny for all your solid fuel needs at the keenest prices 911-37400 or nationalfuels.ie Okay, let's have a look at that weather forecast for you then Generally dry today with sunny spells they're developing after a rather cloudy start highest temperatures 9 to 12 degrees in a light west to northwest breeze Now staying mainly dry tonight with clear spells it'll turn cloudier from the northwest overnight with patchy drizzle developing on western and southwestern coast towards morning lowest temperature that's the national forecast sorry I'm reading the wrong one here's the local one Generally dry tonight with clear spells to start however cloud will gradually build overnight with patchy drizzle developing lowest temperatures 4 to 7 degrees in light to moderate southwest winds It was boiling yesterday boiling you know what I mean by November standards 16 degrees I thought I was having a turn or something and then I looked at the temperature gauge and realised that I may well have been but it was also very warm outside right a caller says what about when the couple separate and the coercive control is moved on to the children on visiting days courts claim it's apparent being overprotective there is an area that needs look at is that something you've contacted the guardie about and said that I believe even though I'm not living with someone that there is a coercive control going on there I'd be interested to see what feedback you would have got if that call had been made I'm sure you have by the way I'm not questioning it for a second my daughter was in a really bad domestic violence situation and getting her to make a formal complaint was impossible and she still hasn't despite him leaving her indeed can I as a parent call to get advice on how to help her the answer to that is a clear yes that the key thing with the guard situation is and anyone can do that about anyone by the way is and it would help you because you're obviously carrying a very big burden there because the person that you brought into the world and love so dearly you're seeing them in a situation and you can't help and you feel helpless and that's a terrible burden on you as well and you have your concerns so yes you can ring the likes of Marie Haynes worth there at her centre or ring the guardie it doesn't trigger a chain of events and I think that's what people might be afraid of and it's the same when reporting when you're the victim of a sexual assault or sex crime it doesn't necessarily mean that you make that call and loads of things automatically happen ring these groups and organisations there are professionals at helping you steering your right direction giving you the right advice as mum or dad I'm not sure which you are in this scenario and make that call for sure definitely and I know you probably wanted to hear the experts say that but I know that's precisely what they would say if they were still here Greg in relation to Covid cases in my opinion there are two groups involved in the spread of virus first the people who won't take the vaccine and secondly the businesses that don't enforce the Covid surpass let's be honest none of us wanted the vaccine but for everyone's sake we took it I mentioned to a premises I was in at the weekend about not being asked for a cert the reply was most of their customers aren't vaccinated so that's why they don't ask we all have a responsibility to keep our hospital as free as we can there are a lot of people out there having their treatment postponed operations delayed this is a very serious situation and doesn't matter what government to Tony Hulind says it's our hospitals that can't cope and businesses who are not obeying rules should rethink indeed and I know what you're saying and rather than the vaccinated in vaccinated saying back and forward to one another wake up wake up you know all that nonsense that people are still going on about just think for yourself and say look regardless of give use on the vaccine people are catching something you might believe it Covid or you might believe it not and it's clogging up the hospitals and then you can talk about well you know that's because of generations of underfunding in our hospital services be that as it may it is where we're at now and whatever our belief is we can all do our bit to keep the pressure off the hospitals and I think that's kind of the thrust of what this caller is saying but there comes a point where our shared interest is what's happening in the hospitals rather than what our differences may be as it relates to government action or inaction or Covid or not Covid or whatever it might be you know we have a collective responsibility to think and look at the hospital and say what's going on there my friends coming from South Africa on holiday and he's in his 70s I was trying to get him insurance for car but no one will cover him any insurance company can you help so it's someone they're coming on holiday is it and they need temporary insurance is that it and you need to put them on as a name driver or something but you're having difficulties I wonder is it the licensing issue but if they were hiring a car there's ways around that isn't there I don't know it's an interesting one and just let us know are you trying to put them on your own insurance let us know because they're always in a car that's lying idle give us more details and I'll be best better equipped to be able to help get an answer a listener says that she identifies with the mother who was on the phone earlier about her son she too has a disability and where she is not a student she's tried to get a job all over letter Kenny but no one looks at the CV they only see the disability not fair at all another coach from the north coming into Donagawa has been stopped a couple of times for overcrowding and underage drinking however they're still in operation and still the same thing goes on how can they be allowed to continue to operate this service if this is the case I wonder is that a story that's been passed through a number of people I don't know but give us more details as well right I think that's where we have to leave it on the program unfortunately thanks to all of you who took part in the show if you watched or listened


Good afternoon. Today, I want to bring with the latest news about the vaccination programme in Wales and how we're continuing to speed up the rollout of people across the country. I also want to focus on some new development to support people with long Covid. I'll start by saying once again, and for the avoidance of any doubt, that vaccination is our number one priority. No vaccines are being held back. We're doing everything we can to make vaccines available to everyone in Wales as fast as we can. We've made a good start since the Pfizer vaccine was approved just six weeks ago. The latest figures show almost 176,000 people have had their first dose of the vaccine. More than 10,000 people every day are now receiving their first dose of the vaccine. That's equivalent to seven people being vaccinated every minute in Wales. More than 5% of the Welsh population has now been vaccinated, and with every day that passes, more people are receiving the jab. A week ago, I published our vaccination strategy. This sets out our plans to offer all eligible adults their vaccinations by autumn. We're making good progress towards our first milestone by offering everyone in the first four priority groups of vaccination by mid-Febru. This includes all front-line health and care staff, everyone living and working in care homes, everyone over the age of 70 and over, and the 130,000 people who are in the extremely clinical, vulnerable group, otherwise known as a shielding group. Every week, our vaccination programme is getting faster. As more clinics are opened and more vaccines are available for the teams of healthcare professionals who are giving vaccines across our country. 28 vaccination centres are open today, and this will increase to 45. There are more than 100 general practices providing vaccines. This will rise to over 250 over the next fortnight. We're developing community vaccination centres, which will bring together GPs, dentists, pharmacists and optometrists to deliver the vaccine. Nine out of ten of our vaccination centres are open seven days a week, and GP-led clinics will also be open on evenings and weekends. This week, our vaccination programme will move up another gear. Supplies of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine have increased markedly. We expect to receive almost double the amount of vaccine this week as we had in the first fortnight of the AstraZeneca vaccine being available. This means more people over 80 and more people living and working in care homes will be vaccinated in GP practices and by community nurses who are staffing the 14 mobile units. We're now vaccinating almost a thousand care home residents every day. On Monday, the Welsh Ambulance Service confirmed that it offers vaccination to all of its frontline staff. More than 60% of staff had already received their first dose, again with more being vaccinated every day. This week, we will provide a further 60,000 Pfizer vaccines for use in our mass vaccination centres, almost double the number available in the previous week. Every vaccine we receive is going to people who need them. Vaccines are not being held back. Every day, we are vaccinating more and more people. A small army of people is working with our NHS around the clock to make sure we're all protected against this terrible virus. And we have very low wasted rates in Wales. Only around 1% of vaccines have not been used. We remain in a race against the virus, not so with other countries in the UK. When we look, though, at the pace of vaccination in Wales, our rate is well above those of most other European countries. I now want to turn to a new development to help support people who are suffering what is commonly known as long COVID. Most people who have COVID-19 will feel better in a few days or weeks and go on to make a full recovery. For some people, their symptoms will last much longer. Nice, the health watchdog, is to find long COVID as lasting for more than 12 weeks. Research suggests that as many as one in 10 people who have had COVID-19 could be affected. The symptoms range from fatigue and breathlessness to not being able to think straight, chest and muscle pain. For some people, it can be a cycle of improving and then feeling worse again. Today, we're launching a new app, the first of its kind, as part of the widest support available to people who are experiencing the long-term effects of coronavirus. The bilingual app has been developed by our NHS Wales respiratory health group, and it provides people with a personal coach to help them on their road to recovery. It features more than 100 videos and links to advice and allows people to record their symptoms, track their progress and learn to manage their symptoms at home with support. Therapists, psychologists, dieticians and consultants have all provided advice together with a general practice lead. Before I take questions, I do want to say a few words about the national situation. We are now starting to see real falls in cases of coronavirus across Wales, including in North Wales. Nationally, the incidence rate has fallen in cases in 100,000 people for the first time in a long time. While cases are still high and the situation is still serious, everyone has put in so much hard work and sacrifice into following the rules and doing the right thing to protecting yourself and each other over these last few weeks. We are making real and increasing progress with our vaccination programme, but we continue to need your help. It's so important that we all carry on following the rules and doing the right thing. That means staying at home, protecting our NHS and saving lives. Together, we all have a part to play in keeping Wales safe. Thank you. I'll now take questions from journalists and as usual, all the answers will be broadcast on our social media channels. My first question today is from James Crichton-Smith from ITV Wales. Mr, thank you. I want to start with alleged breaches of COVID rules in the Senate by Senate members or on the Senate estate. Paul Davis and Darren Millar said, we recognise that what was part of today's work would not be seen to be following the spirit of COVID rules at the time. What damage do you think the actions of Paul Davis, Alan Davis and Darren Millar have had on the overall public health messaging of COVID, particularly the one for the First Minister, of do what you should, not what you can? Two broad points to make here, James. The first is, I'm not aware of all the facts, what hasn't happened, there's bound to be an investigation of fuller understanding of what did take place. As you know, I've been the subject of press stories myself where some people made comments without wanting to understand the facts or not being interested in them. So I don't think I should then lay in on an issue like this where I'm simply not aware of all the facts. The Senate authorities are conducting their own investigation and I'm sure there'll be interest in that. The second point is that there is a broader point here and it's the one that I think you're really making and that is that any challenge, any sense of people not all being in this together isn't helpful in terms of the message that we all need to follow. So I can't be clear, the First Minister's been really clear. We all have a part to play in doing the right thing. So that's why we ask people not to mix with people from outside your own household if you don't have to. You should avoid it. The rules are clear. There are support bubbles available but apart from that, there shouldn't be indoor mixing between households. It's about good hand hygiene. It's about wearing a face covering when you need to and it's also about good ventilation. And I'd hope that not just people who are the subject of the current interest in the story but all of us would reflect that the more consistent we are in the method we give to the public and in what we then do, the better off we'll all be and the sooner we can get out of the current crisis that still affects all of us. Thank you. There is a suggestion that Senate members involve pressured catering staff to provide them alcohol. Is that the sort of culture that exists between Senate members and staff on the Senate of the State? Well again, as I said at the start, I don't know all the facts. However, what I would say, and I think this is quite important, is that the last thing we'd want to see happen is an investigation comes out and it's only staff who essentially get thrown under the bus. Everyone needs to look at what they've done. We need to understand the full impact on what's happened and not rush to judgement. So I'm not going to get drawn in to the hypothetical question you ask. What I will say though is in my own interaction with Senate Commission staff, I've always been polite and respectful and the people that I'm around have been polite and respectful as well. I certainly value the work that our staff do. These are working people earning their own living and I try to treat them as I would want to be treated myself, whether they're catering or security and I hope that's something that members regard as their politics would all agree is the right way to behave. Thank you James and I've got Owen Clarke from BBC Wales. Fynau'r gweinidog i chi. Do you mention a forthcoming and ongoing investigation will establish the facts but do you believe as at least a first step that those members involved in that meeting should either step down or be suspended while that investigation takes place in order to secure public confidence in the rules that you say are so important for us all to adhere to? Well the Labour group has suspended Alan Davis. That's to allow an investigation to take place into what's happened. It's a neutral act. It's not a judgement. It's to allow those full facts to be understood and explored. It's a matter for other groups to decide whether they think they should do something similar but I think the Labour group has done the right thing and it's important as I say this isn't a judgement on the member for Blaine and Gwent. This is really about allowing that investigation to take place. So there are questions for other people to answer rather than me I think on the conduct of other political groups. I just need to be clear that as the health minister this is a health crisis and an economic one and the way through this is for all of us to pull together and to do the right thing. Diolch yn fawr, thank you. On several occasions yesterday on vaccine rollout you said you were confident that seven in ten people over eight years old and seven in ten people who live and work in care homes will have received their first jab by the end of this week. Can you share with us the operational data perhaps that you base that confidence on and can you commit to publishing the data perhaps on Monday that allows us to independently assess whether those figures have been reached? So my understanding of the data is the majority of care home residents have already had a vaccine in that around about seven in ten staff working in a care home have had their vaccine on the first dose of the vaccine. On the other figures I need to see what those are but in the weekly data that we're going to publish the dashboard I referred to previously and I issued a written statement about this at the start of this week we're going to start publishing that information from tomorrow so every week there will be an update. We're obviously also publishing the daily figures and there's been a significant increase again. We went up 10,000 yesterday's figures we've now gone to further 14,000 of the figures we published today so the broad rate is increasing and as I said in my opening the significant increase in AstraZeneca supplies gives us confidence will make a really significant dent in the number of people over 80 who still are awaiting their vaccine I'd want to be in a position to be as open as possible if I can't do that on the Monday then I will make sure we cover that off in the information we're committed to publishing every week so you don't need to go looking at the data and the information because we'll be openly providing that so people can see the progress we're making with those two priority cohorts and of course overall number of people receiving their vaccines and I'm confident enough to be able to say that because we already know that Powys is already issuing invitation letters to over 70s because of the progress it's made in care homes in over 80s and other health boards expect to follow over the next week or so and Powys is picking up and I'm confident that the information we publish over the next week or two will confirm that we've done exactly what we set out to do thank you, Owen I've now got Mark Smith from Wales Online Thank you very much indeed Health Minister it appears different parts of Wales delivering the vaccine to its patients at slightly different speeds health boards are also not publishing the same level of data on how many people in each priority group have been given their first dose with this in mind how is the Welsh Government trying to get consistency between health boards across Wales in the role of this vaccine? Well we're looking for a consistent approach but it's a simple fact that at the start of this when we only had the Pfizer vaccine of course and there was a mass vaccination centre in each health board Powys was able to get on and do a disproportionately larger number of their residents to see them at Powys health board that they've been able to do so and they then supported health boards to their north, south and west in terms of their ability to provide additional options for them that's why Powys are in the first position of offering over 70s appointment letters and that's really good news there is though a broadly consistent approach what we have to understand though is that there are individual challenges around that for example here in Cardiff we know that the initial mass vaccination centre had to pause its delivery for a couple of days because it had a minor COVID outbreak within its staff that meant activity couldn't take place so it was then in a different position to other health boards as I said an answer to Owen Clarke will be publishing regular weekly data so people don't need to go searching for the information because we'll be providing it and we've done that from the outset in the way we've regularly published so people don't need to ask for your information request because we're providing it we've been open with the data we have we'll continue to do that and as well as understanding what each health board are doing to achieve their approach it also depends on local relationships with general practice, with pharmacies I can say though I'm delighted with the response from our primary healthcare professionals there's a real thirst to get involved and to help and we're going to see that as the programme continues to increase and the pace continues to move on so I'm confident we'll see high levels of treatment in every health board but we're also taking opportunities in the vaccination programme board that I attend every week to look and to learn from what takes place around Wales both to share problems but also to look to share answers as well because we really are all in this together Thank you very much indeed and secondly as you mentioned earlier on public health Wales figures published yesterday showed that the case rate per 100,000 people has now gone below 300 for the first time in a long time however the positivity rate of testing is still reasonably high at 17% with these two important figures in mind do you think there is any chance of restrictions being eased ahead of the next Welsh Government review on January 29th or do you believe a more prolonged and strict lockdown approach is needed to prove effective Well I can't prejudge the Welsh Government decision but what I would say is and I've said this before no one should expect any sort of significant easing at the end of the next review period at the end of January our case rates are asked to relatively high it's good news that we've gone under 300 cases per 100,000 the progress is in the right direction at present we've also seen a drop in the positivity rates it wasn't that long ago that nearly one in four people who tested were testing positive too so we're seeing a reduction in that positivity rate in a material amount but it's still really quite high so our case rates remain high our positivity rates remain high and as you know Mark our NHS is still under significant pressure we've seen a slight easing on the pressure and critical care but it's still operating at nearly 150% of its capacity so there is a very slight easing so that's why we've got to be really cautious because if we come out of level 4 too soon and too fast we could well see a rebound in Covid rates and we can end up doing something that overwhelms our health service with all the harm that that would cause to our staff and people who need our health service so people shouldn't expect any significant easing at the end of this current phase but the government will have to look at all of the detail, all of the information and obviously take account of the advice we'll receive from the chief medical officer and our scientific advisers you can expect to hear from the first minister once the government has concluded that review thank you Mark I've now got Dan Bevan from LBC thank you health minister good afternoon there's going to be a vote next week in the Welsh parliament about legislation that could postpone the senate election I understand that the Welsh government's stance on this is that you don't want the election to be postponed nevertheless you're pressing on with this emergency bill considering that there have been elections held in democracies far bigger than Wales's during the height of the pandemic and of course mail-in voting could be a lot more important in this election as well there's really no reason why the election couldn't be held on May 6 is there and if there is then what could you expect would be to postpone it I just don't think it's sensible or responsible at all to say there's no reason why the election couldn't go ahead it's the clear preference of the Welsh government for the election to proceed as planned for our democracy to be reviewed for the people to make a judgement on who they want to represent them and make decisions for them here in Wales for the next phase of the unfinished Covid crisis because even by the first week of May we can be confident that there'll still be a great many more difficult choices to make before we can say the pandemic is over and before we're then into what I believe a full term of recovery from the economic crisis that Covid has caused as well as the health crisis now this is a piece of legislation to guard against the possibility that Covid rates are so significant that we can't have an election and if we're in the same position that we were say or even are today or a few weeks ago I think it would be difficult to have an election not necessarily impossible but part of the challenge are very practical down where in engaging around this work the government and the Senate's commission members at the Senate's commission staff have engaged also with local government election officers who have to run these elections it's not quite as simple as being able to turn the tap on and move everyone to having a postal ballot so there are real practical challenges to go through but it is absolutely a last resort to have a delay in the election and I very much look forward to being able to understand and receive the judgement on electors in Cardiff South and Pynarth and right across Wales and to renew democracy here in Wales for the next difficult and challenging term ahead but I think we can do so with a sense of optimism too because of the hope that the vaccines are giving us Thank you and the First Minister during FMQs yesterday at least appeared to hints that Wales could get more of the population share of the vaccine because the population here is older and thicker than the population in England can you provide a bit more clarity on that any details of conversations that you've been having with the respective devolved administrations of Michael Gove on this Well not just the conversation with Michael Gove that the First Minister has been having and also with other First Ministers across the UK but this really comes from the Prime Minister saying that there should be an expectation for the first four priority groups to have all received their first vaccine by the middle of February because we have a disproportionately higher number of people in those first four groups so we could undertake the same population vaccination as every other part of the UK but we wouldn't achieve the same amount for those first four priority groups being protected Now as well as conversations First Ministers had our officials are having regular conversations with counterparts in both the Department for Health and Social Care in the UK Government but also the business department that is leading on the procurement I've had several conversations in the Dean's army the UK Vaccinations Minister and his indication to me is that we expect to have enough AstraZeneca supply for Wales to be able to achieve that expectation by the middle of February Now that I think would be good news and that does rely of course on the vaccine supply coming to us I think through this week you'll see a continued acceleration in our delivery you'll then see a further acceleration in the week that follows and we'll see the expected increase in vaccination supply so it's certainly a matter that I've raised as well as the First Minister and if there is any change that will be up front with people about what that means so again transparency I think really does matter to be able to set out what we're doing with the vaccines when they're received here in Wales Thank you Dan and I've got Thomas Evans from S. Pedwarech We've spoken to the owner of a public house in Pembrokeshire who's not received any financial support from the Welsh Government since before level 4 restrictions were introduced back in mid December Is this really fair and what more can the Welsh Government do to support these businesses if the lockdown is extended? Well as you know we've got the most generous package of support for businesses within the United Kingdom The economy minister has set out what those packages are and we're applying for that support as we speak and I think the important thing here is that we recognise that Covid is an economic crisis as well as a public health one I can't come on in the individual business that you refer to and I'm sure you'll understand why I'm not aware of all the facts but we'll continue to look at what we're able to do if the restrictions continue when you look again at the money that we have available to us we'll also need to take account of the fact that if the UK Government provide additional support to businesses in England we would expect an additional share of money to be provided to Wales that would give us additional resources to be able to support businesses and public services here in Wales so we've already set out what we're able to do at this point in time we can't review what we're able to do financially to support businesses and as I say this Government recognises full well there is a public health crisis and it's also an economic one which is why I say that the next Parliament term will be a recovery as well as a recovery of our healthcare system Diolch am hynny and today as you mentioned in the opening statement sees the launch of a new app to help against Covid-19 this is another app launched during the pandemic what are the costs of developing these applications and how will their success be measured well I don't have the individual figures for the app development in front of me but it's been worked in by our NHS Wales respiratory health group a range of different healthcare professionals people involved in the third sector all looking at how to support people and we'll judge the success in it partly from the feedback of members of the public it's really important to listen to them and that's a broader point that we've been driving through the whole of this term to understand from members of the public themselves for them to report the measures that matter to them the experience of matters to them as well and because we're living through the pandemic face to face time with healthcare professionals is now rather more difficult we're actually looking to provide as much information more remotely now that doesn't mean there'll never be face to face healthcare actually that relationship based healthcare is still really important to us but many of us also expect to be able to access support and information in a more remote manner those of us who have smartphones and the correct majority of us do expect to be able to do different parts of our daily living in a different way with the devices that many of us have this is about recognising when the public already are but also recognising this is a rising challenge that we'll be living with for many years because we don't fully understand the impact of Covid-19 in longer term consequences so we're learning and doing as we go listing and working with the patient listing and working with our healthcare professionals and we'll be interested in both the number of people that use it they're reporting whether it makes a difference to them if they're a hard click or outcomes that help us to understand its overall impact thank you Thomas and I've got Harry Evans from DailyPost Fel dda, gwneud o'r cyffin earlier this week the British Medical Association said they were deeply concerned about vaccine or strategy in Wales they described the decision not to use all the supplies at the earlier state hospitals of their ordering. How do you respond to these concerns? I've responded several times to these concerns that I think are now old news they're responding at the time with some clarity that's been provided since then by the First Minister about that interview that was done several days ago now we're very clear we're not holding back vaccines that isn't the strategy that the Welsh Government has ever followed we're getting vaccines out as quickly as possible as quickly as our healthcare system can deliver them and I'd hope that if the BMA were asked today they'd recognise that clarification and recognise that as we've provided and organised more vaccination centres across the country our infrastructure means we can deliver more vaccinations and it's BMA members working alongside unison, RCN, GMB, UNITE and many other healthcare professionals who are now delivering an increasingly rapid roller of the vaccinations here in Wales that's why it's good news we've moved from 10,000 vaccines being delivered the day before to about 14,000 vaccines delivered yesterday and I expect to see further progress to the rest of this week so that's good news for all of our healthcare professionals who are both receiving the vaccine as well as those healthcare professionals who are delivering it, good news for the whole public too as well Dill, and it's been claimed that the mass vaccination centre in venue Cymru at Sandidno is only working at half capacity operating three days a week instead of six because of a lack of vaccine why aren't more vaccines being sent to these centres? Well, I'm not aware of the allocations that are made about the length of time it's operating what I will say though is we're putting out as much of the Pfizer vaccine as our vaccination centres can deliver with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine though that is reliant on supplies we're getting supplies on a week to week basis so we're going as fast as the vaccine supply allows us to if you have got more detailed questions you haven't had a conversation with Betsi Cadwaladr health board about how to make sure after the call Harry we can get someone to talk to you at the detail of the specific vaccination centre that you mentioned Thank you, I've got Rob Taylor from rexham.com Good afternoon, taking the drinks issue away from the incident and to process the regulations don't appear to contain anything that exempts the centre of the state from the rules or gives it the unusual privilege of having a period of as you referenced self investigation in simple terms a local pub or someone driving to a country park suffering an alleged Covid breach couldn't really tell police or council enforcement to come back in several weeks as they wanted to hold their investigation first can you clarify what makes the centre the special case and what other entities are similarly able to hold internal investigations? The centre isn't a special case it's a workplace with a licence there are other workplaces in similar positions every public house, every members club is a workplace that holds a licence as well so if Cardiff council enforcement and environmental health officers want to talk with Senedd commission who run the building, not the Welsh Government that I'm sure they talk about what they're doing so from my point of view I'm not responsible for the investigation it's quite right that I shouldn't be I'm responsible for the delivery of healthcare the strategy and our response to Covid and I really do believe that everyone who's watching not just this story but understanding what it does and doesn't mean needs to recognise that none of us are in possession of the full facts and actually what we can't do is saying if other people aren't doing the right thing I'm no longer prepared to do the right thing as well because that would mean that this crisis will last for longer with more harm being caused so again I say to everybody the important thing is for us all to do the right thing if we all do the right thing we'll get through this as quickly as possible we'll also reduce the harm that's caused and many more of us will reach the end of this journey together Thank you Data coming from Israel indicates that single first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and a longer wait for the second may not have the desired or predicted impact can you give any further detail on those recent results and if Welsh Government feel a quicker two dose strategy is better could you and perhaps would you act independently from the UK Government policy on that? Well it's not about a UK Government policy it's actually the advice we receive from the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation they're an independent expert group they provide advice and then each of the four Governments in the UK have to decide what to do with that advice we also of course get advice from our Chief Medical Officers and the JCVI and all four of our Chief Medical Officers have given advice to Governments that has been followed in all four Governments despite all the four different political leaderships and that is the current strategy we have of the interval between the first dose and the second one I have seen the story briefly about data from Israel it isn't clear even from the story about the impact on actual effectiveness but if there is a change in data both from what Israel around the world and what we also understand here then of course I'd expect the JCVI to take account of that and once that advice if it's revised is provided I'll then have a choice to make as a Minister and it's my decision to make because a Minister here at the Wales it's not a UK Government policy choice it's how we respond to independent expert advice we get Minister still make decisions and we're making these choices it is what at times a confusing landscape with many people claiming to be experts many people claiming they know more than other people and yet actually as Ministers you have to look at the best available advice and then you have to decide that's my job and it's a job I'll continue to do for the remainder of this crisis until of course we reach the centre of the election and the people will have their say on who they should be Thank you, I've now got Tom Magner Thank you Health Minister I asked your colleague the First Minister last Friday about doubts over accurate use of the up-to-date addition of the JCVI vaccine priority list as it refers to unpaid carers he essentially said that unpaid carers would need to make themselves known and prove that they are unpaid carers before receiving their COVID-19 vaccine I know that you did tweet confirmation the afternoon before that unpaid carers are in Band 6 but the lack of reference to the critical footnote 3 to Band 6 where the reference to unpaid carers appears has caused and still continues to cause major viewer confusion so do you agree with your colleague the First Minister the responsibilities clearly and completely on unpaid carers too as they used to say advance and be recognised Well the challenge here Tom is that we don't hold a central register of unpaid carers and the challenge then is how do we then identify people we're working together actually I've already asked my poster to make sure that we advance this work but well before we get to priority 6 to understand with carers groups themselves how we can accurately or as accurately as possible identify people who are unpaid carers and the challenge and you'll know this Tom as well is that many people who act as unpaid carers or a list anyway they haven't sought help they haven't had a carers assessment they aren't on a caring related benefit so we have got a challenge in how we accurately identify people and this will mean that we'll need to work with each other on it and I don't think there's going to be a way through without having some carers needing to identify themselves I mean to think about how that's done though because the last thing I want is it will have a large number of calls being made from people who are concerned to general practice pharmacists or others because actually we're trying to make sure that our system isn't overwhelmed that's what's important we work through this with carers organisations and our LHS to how as fairly and as promptly we can do this and then of course we'll provide clarity well in advance of reaching priority group 6 and of course Tom we'll make sure that you and your listings are aware Thank you for that can I just explore things a little further on the 12th of October last year in answer to me you welcomed the launch of unpaid carer ID cards in Ceredigion I'm assuming that the first ministers announced and then unpaid carers across Wales are now ready it appears from your first answer that they're not many of our viewers will believe that that's the case because after four and a half years or so the social services wellbeing Wales Act recognising the need for assessments of unpaid carers is this all known in the Welsh population as we reported in late November are our effectively our viewers back at square one in terms of being properly included in society especially in vaccination measures No I don't think that's true at all Tom and we've recognised throughout this crisis the role that unpaid carers play in particular during the crisis in supporting people who would otherwise be left on their own we recognise the anxiety those carers will have not just for their own health but actually for the health and wellbeing of the person they're caring for and there are more people who are now undertaking unpaid carer roles so throughout the whole of this term and beyond we've been trying to have a new settlement for carers for people to be able to come forward with a young old middle age to make sure that carers recognise their own role but also the country recognises the role the carers play and I think we've made real progress I certainly wouldn't say we're back to square one there are always challenges therefore the recognises that contribution as well as making sure people are aware of the legal entitlement they have to a carers assessment so there'll always be more work for us to do Tom but I definitely think the pandemic has heightened not lessened the public awareness of the role that unpaid carers play in our society Thank you Tom Finally we have Nathan Shusmith from the speaker You mentioned in your opening statement that cases per hundred 100,000 people have fallen to just under 300 That's down from around 649 cases per 100,000 people five weeks ago Well this case rate is higher than Scotland but significantly lower than England and Northern Ireland As cases continue to fall in Wales could any potential easing of restrictions in the coming weeks and months in Wales be delayed if cases remain high across the border No we're largely looking at the position here in Wales Now of course we need to recognise as we always have done there is always going to be some cross border transfer because there are economic and social and community links that go across our border at various places not just in north east Wales of course but all the way across our border in mid Wales and south east Wales too What we're trying to do there was currently telling us what the broad public health situation is telling us and that will lead to the decisions that ministers make over the coming weeks as we review our level 4 measures I indicated earlier people shouldn't expect there's going to be a significant easing of those measures because case rates are still high our positivity rates are still high even though they've fallen from the much more extraordinary measures they reached a few weeks ago We also know the pressure on our health service means that we don't want to see another bump in cases which will inevitably lead to more people needing to come into hospital for care and treatment and that will inevitably lead to more people losing their lives in larger number as well so all those factors have to play into where we are and will then make the right choice for Wales Thank you Finally a new study by Biontech and Pfizer has found that the COVID-19 vaccine is likely to be effective against the new strain of coronavirus Would you welcome that and what would you say to people that are still not 100% sure whether they want to take a vaccine How confident are you that a vaccine take up is high So it's always good news to hear more about the effectiveness of the vaccines that we currently have and have been approved by our independent regulator A concern that potential new strains may affect vaccine effectiveness is obviously a key concern for ministers and all four governments across the UK not just a concern for me here in Wales so we continue to take interest in those new variants that's why we've taken pretty extraordinary measures in terms of international travel because of the concern around new variants and what they might mean for us here I'd say to anyone who's watching this is concerned about having a COVID vaccine the decision to regulate and approve for use any of the COVID vaccines isn't in the hands of a politician anywhere here within the United Kingdom there's an independent regulator that looks at all of the advice to clinical trials to decide whether the vaccine is safe and effective it's only if that independent regulator that MHRA approves that vaccine that it can be used so people are scared and concerned about fake news and anti-vax story on social media and others I'd ask people to look again at the evidence and to look again at the harm that COVID has caused if we can find a way to prevent more hospitalisation find a way to prevent deaths then we should be prepared to do so I certainly look forward to having my vaccine when it's my turn and ask everyone when it's your turn please be ready, please have the vaccine because you'll be taking care of yourselves and other people you may otherwise never get the chance to meet thank you all very much and I look forward to seeing you and talking to you again next week if not sooner