A number of local estate agents have come together to try and ensure that frontline staff have alternative accommodation to stay in during the Covid-19 crisis, while The Impartial Reporter also understand that Enniskillen Campus of CAFRE has been earmarked for possible accommodation for staff.

Both Montgomery and Finlay and Smyth Leslie have been working on sourcing available housing for staff and they want members of the public who might be able to help with more accommodation to get in touch.

Nick Finlay explained that he wanted “to do whatever I could to help” with Niall Smyth saying that it was “important that everyone came together to help each other”.

Last week the Department of Health urged each Trust to work with local hotels to provide accommodation for health care workers.

In his letter to Trust Chief Executives Richard Pengelly, Permanent Secretary for the Department of Health wrote: “For those staff affected by the 14 day household isolation policy, staff should - on an entirely voluntary basis - be offered the alternative option of staying in hotel accommodation while they continue to work. This should be organised locally by HSC Trusts.”

However many, hotels in Fermanagh have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis and with many of their staff on furlough it is not as straight forward logistically to organise hotels.

The Western Trust explained that there is a plan in place with a spokesperson stating that the first phase was to make accommodation available as close to the hospital as possible for frontline acute staff who “need to be close or on hospital sites due to the intensity of their work commitments/rotas associated with services to patients in Covid pathways” and also to acute staff who “are not advised to return home as they have very vulnerable family members at home”.

The Trust spokesperson continued: “In addition the Trust is scoping the potential to have dedicated accommodation available in the weeks ahead for staff who become unwell due to Covid and want to have these staff cared for on/close to our hospital sites.”

For Mr. Finlay it was as simple as wanting to help: “I was sitting at home. And I’m not doing anything at the moment with the way things are and I just wanted to see if I could help at all. So I put up a message to see if we could get together all the houses that were free so health workers could use them,” he said.

Mr. Smyth has been doing similar: “We did a trawl of properties that we had on our books, that perhaps were for sale and were empty and we made contact with the owners to see if they would allow the properties to be used. And the response from people has bee excellent. Everyone wants to do their bit.”

Mr. Finlay wanted to take some of the burden off those in charge of the health service and use his expertise in the housing market to put in place a system to help those on the frontline: “I think everyone in the hospital has enough to be worrying about. It is just a matter of providing somewhere where people can lay their head after a long shift. If they don’t want to travel a long-distance home or if they have vulnerable people at home who they want to make sure are kept safe. We just want to help.”

That help is already coming to fruition. Very quickly Mr. Finlay had a whole host of people contact him to offer up free properties and healthcare workers are already using them to take the pressure off: “I had someone contact me from Scotland who has a house in Cornagrade. It is there and ready to be used. There is a nurse from Strabane who is using a house in Lisnarick which is cutting her travel time down greatly with the long shifts she is doing.

“So we can see it working, but we want to make sure that any health worker who needs it has a house that they can use.”

Mr. Finlay and the Trust have been working closely with Mr. Finlay regularly providing updates for the properties that are available and organising collection of keys and other logistical arrangements but he is keen for more people to get in touch to ensure there are enough properties available for every eventuality: “We don’t what is coming but it is important we have everything in place so I would really like for people to get in touch with me if they have any properties that they could make available,” he said.

Mr. Finlay can be contacted on 07835194814. Mr. Smyth can be contacted on 028 6632 0456.