Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our witnesses. We would have liked much more time with them but we will do the best we can.

I welcome the movement on public health resourcing which is long overdue. I hope it will be finalised shortly. I also welcome the fact that Dr. John Cuddihy said yesterday to the committee that 14-day tracing is due to start shortly. That should allow us to refine and better target the measures being taken when we get basic information about the places of transmission of the virus. That is a good thing and I hope that data will be publicly available as quickly as possible.

I have two questions for the Minister and two for the representatives of NPHET. My first question relates to the ramping up of testing and tracing. I fully accept that it is difficult to strike a balance between testing capacity and incidence of the virus. That said, we all share concerns about the missed opportunities over the summer months to put contingency plans in place so that we could be testing at capacity at this point and over recent weeks. The committee was told yesterday by Mr. Paul Reid that the intention is to recruit up to 3,500 people at a cost of €450 million this year and an estimated cost for next year of €700 million. That is a vast amount of money. The Minister has made points about the development of rapid-testing technology and we have our fingers crossed that there may be a vaccine soon. I would like the Minister to tell us what contracts are being offered to those 3,500 people. Hopefully, we will not have a need for a long-term, extensive workforce in this area. What kinds of contracts are being offered?