Dr. Ronan Glynn:

First, the dashboard is due to be updated before the end of this week. On the Deputy's point, the figures for Kildare have been given every single day over the past number of weeks and for Laois and Offaly for the two weeks in particular. What I would caution is that for many EDs there have been fewer than five cases, and many of those cases are families, extended families and family clusters, so we need to be careful about what we give out at a point in time.

More broadly, it is accurate that the number of cases in Kildare in particular was driven by these clusters in meat processing facilities but the people who work in those meat processing facilities live, socialise, travel and interact with people all over the county. I have said previously that the county boundary is crude but we had to take some crude measure. As we heard earlier, the cases were not confined to Kildare and we have seen cases in Carlow and Wexford, for example, linked to the issues in Kildare, thankfully at a lower level. However, in broad terms, we had to pick a geography.

As we said previously, and as the WHO has said, at times we have to move fast at the enemy at the cost of perfection. I would put my hands up and say that but, in saying that, when we make these decisions, we have a set of data in front of us at a point of time and we have to make recommendations and decisions based on the potential for what might happen over the following days.

To go back to our meeting on 7 August where I made those recommendations, on that day there had been 150 cases in Kildare in the previous 14 days but 128 of those had arisen in the previous seven days, so we were very justified at that point in moving quickly to prevent community transmission.

To echo the Deputy's words, I acknowledge in particular the work and buy-in of the people in Kildare, notwithstanding their anger and frustration about what has happened. Their actions have prevented widespread community transmission and the situation there continues to improve. I will ask Professor Nolan if he wants to come in on this.