Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

There is no doubt that temperature testing has a place but we are more worried about asymptomatic presentations, that is, people who present with no symptoms but who are infectious. We and the other health sector unions have jointly asked the HSE to change its policy of advising staff who are close contacts of a case but have no symptoms to come back to work. We believe that is unsafe. We need swabbing and we need to know the status of workers. In the private sector, there is now mandatory staff swabbing but we do not have such a policy in the public acute hospital system. HSE officials will speak to the committee later and they will say, as they have said to us, that a swab is just a picture in time. However, we believe it is necessary because we know that asymptomatic workers in the private sector are being picked up as positive, and when they are asymptomatic and positive, they still pass the virus on to others. A temperature is one symptom that can have a number of different causes, but the swabbing of front-line workers must be mandatory in the acute service as well as the private sector.