Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's statement on this issue. It is amazing that the Department is involved with it in so many ways, given what its brief is. I had not considered that it would be tied in to hand sanitisers and seeing what ingredients they contain, and the public definitely was not aware of that. I might return to the nub of the issue, namely, what happened in Backweston and the campus itself. Was a paper trail being followed, with documentation coming from a supplier?

Was testing actually being carried out on the campus itself? How much actual testing of the product was happening in the Backweston laboratory complex in Kildare during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic? Was it a case of companies issuing documentation in respect of their products, which was taken as legitimate, and the back testing not being done in the departmental complex as a result? The departmental complex located at Backweston laboratories in Kildare is significant. How much actual work was being done in those labs in the early days of Covid? Were they fully operational, with full testing happening, and what was the output from them? As I said previously, it is unusual that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine was actually involved in this process. I am concerned about the throughput in the labs themselves.

The real knock-on effect applies to the public and how it regards hand sanitiser. We have one here in front of us and I was looking at the bottle as some of my colleagues were talking. There is no indication of whether it has been approved, and if so, by whom. It has to be googled to get such information. Have we thought about putting stickers on bottles of hand sanitiser acknowledging that they are approved by Department? Taking Bord Bia as an example, it has a major process of labelling its products so that the public is aware of their contents, their origin and that they are approved. There is no label on hand sanitiser bottles to say that the product is approved by the Department or it is a product that it stands over. If labelling can be used for food traceability, I do not see why the hand sanitiser companies cannot use it. I googled the bottle of hand sanitiser in front of me and its origins are in Bulgaria. Obviously I take it that the product is safe, but we need to have a system whereby a member of the public can pick up a bottle of hand sanitiser with due confidence in respect of the contents through labelling. I ask the Minister to comment on those issues.