Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will ask a number of questions to which the witnesses might respond. I welcome all of them back before the committee. I had an opportunity to question them in early July when the number of cases was decreasing. That number decreased significantly afterwards as well.. My first question is on the significantly high number of cases, particularly in meat plants but also in direct provision centres, in what my colleague, Deputy Lawless, referred to as the lockdown counties versus other parts of the country. I would like to hear from the witnesses as to why they believe there is a disparity between Kildare, Laois and Offaly versus the west of Ireland.

Also, I asked in June about multilingual signage and training. Has that improved in light of everything we now know about Covid-19 and the threat it causes to migrant workers, low-paid workers or indeed workers in meat plants?

My next question relates to unannounced inspections, an issue I also raised previously. One of the witnesses may have mentioned earlier that there were some unannounced inspections but not many. Can they provide an indication of how many we are talking about because if they are not taking place that is a huge issue in itself? Hopefully, that will be addressed shortly.

Finally, on foot of the witnesses' opening statements, there was a discussion on hot-bedding, which is shift workers sharing bedding or, indeed, housing. How prevalent is that practice?