Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. Quite rightly, there is a lot of commentary around testing and tracing at present. First, I make the point that we currently have one of the highest levels of testing anywhere in the world. I recently looked at international comparative data in respect of tests per 100,000 people, and I estimate that we currently rank at 12th out of 110 countries, some of which are very small states. When these are removed from the data set, we sit in the top ten countries for testing. The HSE deserves huge credit. From a standing start in March, when we had no history of these types of regimes, it created, from nothing, one of the most comprehensive testing and tracing regimes.

I know people are concerned about turnaround times and it is an issue raised by this committee several times, including, no doubt, with the HSE yesterday. We all want the turnaround times to be as quick as possible and we are constantly working to improve them. It is worth noting that, relative to many countries in Europe, our turnaround times are pretty good. I do not suggest they are the best but the HSE has done and continues to do a good job. At present, we are transitioning to a full-time workforce of approximately 3,000 people. I believe the HSE is recruiting 1,300 or 1,400 of those staff members. This is critical work which will enable us to redeploy clinicians back to their front-line roles.

I asked the HSE some time ago to investigate additional options for increasing testing capacity further. As members are aware, we have the capacity to carry out approximately 100,000 tests per week and in the past seven days, more than 96,000 people have been tested. I would like to see increased capacity. It is worth noting that this is a highly competitive market internationally and some other countries would bite our hand off for some of the capacity we have and some countries have asked us for that capacity.

I also wish to state that we also have tasked HIQA with an urgent technology review. I believe there are rapid testing technologies available that we need to get on the ground and rolled out as soon as our experts state they are ready to deploy here.