Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

From some of the clinical advice this morning there is talk that the flu season may reach us in September or thereafter. We have very little time to prepare for that. From both a social and an economic perspective, and speaking as a public representative, there is a benefit to reducing all levels of influenza that we can in order to avoid it being mistaken for Covid-19. Even the slightest symptoms of influenza will lead to people having to self-isolate, to take time off work, and perhaps even entire businesses having to shut down. There is also the idea of false-positive spikes or surges, so the more we can do on the influenza side the better. We need much more detail from the HSE on that at this point.