Mr. Paul Reid:

I thank Deputy Durkan for his questions. I will make some brief comments and then ask my colleague, Dr. Henry, to respond. On the issue of lessons, the NPHET delegation including Dr. Ronan Glynn and Professor Philip Nolan will give the committee some insights later on but in terms of the transmission of the virus and the actions taken, largely what we were seeing was a mass transmission into the community. The actions taken and the approaches recommended by Government were directly related to what the analysis was demonstrating in terms of transmission. One key lesson is that the public health measures are absolutely key. We have spent a lot of time today talking about testing and tracing and rightly so but I feel the need to really emphasise that the public health measures are our 80% factor in terms of suppressing this virus and mitigating against further transmission. Testing and tracing can be a 15% to 20% factor; an important one but not the major factor. The big lesson is and remains the role of the public health measures. In terms of actions and their impact, I may have picked up the Deputy's question incorrectly but I think it related to specific actions that we would have implemented in the context of the mass testing that we carried out in meat plants and food processing plants.

Our public health teams will be overseeing the implementation of those actions and the national standing oversight committee would be assessing the whole sector in terms of responsiveness to some of the measures we would have to put in place specifically in respect of that. I ask Dr. Henry to describe any wider lessons.