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

Again, it would be interesting. These issues all relate to transparency.

I very much agree with the point the Chair made. As representatives of the people, we should be supporting what the witnesses are doing but the actions they are taking have to make sense to us. We have to be provided with the underlying evidence which supports the decisions. That is not always the case. What we discovered a couple of weeks ago in terms of the lack of contact tracing back more than 48 hours was a bit of a watershed and caused much concern. If decisions are being taken on the basis of the evidence, then the evidence must be provided. I have been saying from the very beginning that all of the data, and there are vast amounts of it, should be open source. I have to say I have had the experience over the past six months or so, along with other Deputies and many in the media, of going to great lengths to try to get my hands on basic information. That should not be the case. The more information people have, the better informed they are and the more some of these decisions can make sense.

We had the conversation at the start this meeting. I am really concerned now that there will not be a forum, however unsatisfactory, for getting access to that data. I encourage all of our witnesses to make that data available. The Minister said that data is now provided on cases on an electoral division, ED, basis. It is not, actually, as I have been looking for that for months. It is provided on a local electoral area, LEA, area basis rather than an ED. I cannot understand why it is not provided on an ED basis.

It would again help to get the message across to people that in our local area of, for example, Santry or Stillorgan, these are the rates and we have to work together to get them down. That would help to achieve buy-in from the public which is really important together with the whole issue of transparency. I hope that there will be a change in approach to public representatives because it has not been satisfactory to date.

I raised earlier with the Minister the question of the status of the workforce that will be recruited for testing and tracing. We are talking about a very large number, 3,500, employees and I asked whether they will be temporary contracts or what their status will be.

Coincidentally, after I left here earlier, I looked at a reply that I got this morning from the HSE which is talking about recruiting a permanent workforce. I am concerned about that. Can I have a complete breakdown of the proposals for the recruitment of that workforce? It does not make sense that it should be a permanent workforce. Hopefully, there will be other developments which will negate the need for that level of staffing.

The other point is that the HSE spoke to me in that reply about leveraging existing community services. I would be nervous about that. The existing community services, as we all know, are very inadequate, whether that is the number of GPs or therapists, and there are long waiting lists for all of those community services. I hope that the HSE will be looking at arrangements so that the existing level of provision of community staff would not be impacted. In that regard, what consideration-----