Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Friday, 10 July 2020
Special Committee on Covid-19 Response
Congregated Settings: Meat Plants (Resumed)
Mr. Philip Carroll:
The guidelines have developed to some degree in respect of the 15 May guidelines published by the HSE. Essentially, all of the things that were happening at meat plant level prior to 15 May were encapsulated in those HSE guidelines and some additional points were added. In the past few days we received an updated set of guidelines without any significant additional actions required on the part of meat plants. I do not want to presume that everything is perfect. Things have reached a point of perfection in the sense that we have reached the stage where we have no active cases, having had a significant peak in cases in the final two weeks of April and the first week of May. There was a significant spike in cases in meat plants and that spike corresponded pretty much with the spike in cases that occurred in that period in the general community. I am not confident enough to say that everything is perfectly correct, but what we will do is remain vigilant every single day. We will adhere to all of the advice that we get from the HSE, the HSA and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and completely comply with all of those requirements.
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