Mr. Paul Reid:

I will make a few comments and then I may call on one of my colleagues. I thank the Deputy for her opening comments, which we will pass on to everybody. I am sure they have heard them.

Second, regarding the Skellig Star in Cahersiveen, we have been working very co-operatively with the Department of Justice and Equality in recent weeks, specifically on the location the Deputy mentioned. It has been the subject of joint engagements between the public health teams, the local community teams and with officials from the Department of Justice and Equality on a national level. It has also been the subject of discussions between me and the Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality. It is true that there has been a lot of engagement and collaboration in terms of working with us to try to address the issues.

Specifically in relation to our role in that regard, we give public health advice very clearly and such advice is very well publicised. There is an obligation on the operators of direct provision centres to implement the advice. On many occasions we go into centres. In that specific case, our public health teams would have gone in and given specific advice on the location, both advice for staff and residents of the direct provision centres. There would have been a lot of engagement in recent weeks. I have been engaged locally with the teams down there as well. As I understand it, there has been significant engagement by the HSE.

I cannot comment on the particular positive case and the testing the Deputy mentioned. I do not know the detail of the case but I am happy to get back to her about it. Our Cork-Kerry community-based teams and the public health teams put significant supports in place there, not just in terms of advice. The implementation of public health advice is the responsibility of centres themselves. We will go in and support them in terms of what they need to do, but there is an obligation on the centres to implement the advice.

Separately, in terms of clinical care for anybody, we have been providing that pathway through our own public health teams as well.