Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank those from the Department who are here today.

I wish to return to the issue of testing in airports. Last week in the media I requested that we do Polymerase chain reaction, PCR, Covid testing at Dublin and the other airports. I believe this is eminently feasible and have made the point that if we do not do it at the airports, we will end up doing it in the community a little bit later in the year. I note the comments made by a previous speaker who I think said that the medical advice was that the testing regime was not robust enough or did not capture enough and therefore it was almost not worth doing. PCR Covid testing is what we do in the hospitals at present and is about 80% to 85% effective. I am not sure there is any test anywhere more effective than that. Essentially, we decide when we test that we are going to miss people who are asymptomatic at the time or are very early on in the infection because it does do not show up then. A subsequent test, if they have symptoms, is we how establish that they are Covid-positive. Then we go through the rigmarole of contact tracing and all the rest of it. I heard what Mr. Spratt said about testing at airports and foreign centres. Has anyone looked at the cost of doing what we are proposing to do abroad which we could probably do now quite easily here? We certainly know the costs of doing it here. I am not sure that we know what we are going to pay for doing it abroad. We will still have the same number of cases slipping through regardless of where we do it. Perhaps someone will take that question.