Mr. Jim Breslin:

The legislation on the registration of deaths in this country allows a three-month period for a death to be registered. In normal times that is probably fine although it does leave a lag for the information to be available, but in the context of a pandemic where one wants the information to be as up to date as possible, that is quite a lag. In Northern Ireland, for example, a death must be registered in five days. We are in discussions with other Departments on that but to get around the issue a full analysis is being done onRIP.ieand it is a very close approximation of the total number of deaths.