Mr. Cormac Healy:

The point we made earlier is that nobody had all of the answers or even has all of the answers about Covid-19. We put before the committee points and facts showing that the members we work with put measures in place. We should not forget the reality that when one looks across the whole industry, one will see that in some plants there were no cases, in some plants there were very few cases and in a limited number of plants there were quite a few cases. Questions have rightly been asked as to what more can be learned or focused on from those cases, but substantial measures were put in place from the very beginning.

I am aware that as the Deputy says, SIPTU wrote to the then Minister in April because it provided the letter to some of the companies. It related to supports for the broader overall meat and dairy sector and acknowledged that work was being done at that time in the industry. Both employees and employers were doing everything possible to comply with the measures but it has been a graduation also with the measures. Thankfully we find ourselves today in a situation where we have no active cases at the moment. We have a robust set of measures that will continue and will be maintained. That is still an important point - we can go back and back but that is where we are today. We have robust measures that will be continued in the weeks and months ahead.