Mr. David Hughes:

The requirement for employees to report on Covid comes from the original Act. An employee in the original Act cannot put colleagues at risk. They are obliged to avoid putting their colleagues at risk. Labour lawyers and trade union officials of experience take the view that such an obligation in a pandemic requires Covid-19 to be reported to a person's employer. If a person is symptomatic, if a person suspects he or she has it or if the public health authorities say he or she has it, that person would be obliged to report it. By not doing so, that person would be putting his or her colleagues at risk and an employer would be entitled to move against such an employee in that situation. There is an obligation without doubt to report to one's employer.

On the question of permission to report, given the employee has an obligation to tell his or her employer, the employer then would not have to seek GDPR concerns in respect of reporting it to a State authority where the obligation would be there to do so. I do not believe these are real issues. As we are dealing with a pandemic, these matters have to be addressed with a level of urgency not there at the moment.