Mr. Paul Reid:

Right now the challenges ultimately depend on the transmission of the disease. As I said to Deputy Carthy earlier, as we are dealing with a low positivity rate and a high negativity rate, the vast majority of those tests will now be automated and completed in less than two days because they are negative and texts are sent out automatically. Where we deal with more complex cases, such as testing in congregated settings and among vulnerable groups, the completion of that process and contacting that person and their contacts takes more time. Sometimes we are dealing with people in a congregated setting, an ICU or a non English-speaking community. More complex cases take more time, so as that positivity rate changes, we will deal with more complex cases.

The second part of the Deputy's question related to the availability of reagents, which have largely come from a few suppliers. Roche and Abbott are the two major global suppliers based in Ireland and we have made agreements with them. We have also established a supply line from overseas in China, which now supplies our 41 labs with a steady supply of reagents. That has put us in a much stronger position.

The Deputy also asked about data and reporting. I accept her frustration with this issue because she has been diligent with her questioning of us on it. We are in a much stronger position now and we publish an operational report every day that sets out the number of ICU beds, trends, positive cases, and so on. We are now including a dashboard in that report, which shows the numbers of tests done throughout the week, the referral times - that is, the time it takes from someone feeling symptoms to being referred by a doctor - and the time it takes from swab test to lab test, and we will have the complete end-to-end time shortly as well.

That dashboard went live last night and we will be building it further as we go along.