Mr. Cormac Healy:

I thank the Deputy. He is entitled to his position on the matter but I do not accept the position as he has characterised it. It should be known that an outbreak is categorised as two or more cases which can then somehow be portrayed as a big and major outbreak. The Deputy mentioned a figure of 25%. As I understand it, from the latest figures, there are open outbreaks of Covid but they can be very small. An outbreak is considered open until such time as 28 days have passed.

To show something else in terms of level of exposure to Covid, I will point to the ongoing serial testing programme that is running in our sector. It is important to give members the latest figures on that. More than 165,000 tests have now been carried out in that serial testing across the meat industry, primary and secondary, across 90 sites. The positivity rate in that programme overall, across those 165,000 tests, is coming out at 0.79%. In the current cycle, the positivity rate is running at 0.36%, which is extremely low. It is fair that I point out that this is one of the only areas beyond the healthcare sector in which serial testing has been carried out on an ongoing basis. We are picking up community cases because we are doing serial testing. If one looks at some of the recent community testing that was carried out in pop-up centres, as we have heard on the news in recent times, they were getting positivity rates of 3% to 4%. In the current cycle of testing in meat plants, the positivity rate is 0.36%. There are significant mitigation, control and prevention measures in place and a considerable amount of effort has gone into them. There has been a major focus on the meat industry but the work and effort that has been put in to bring the positivity rate to where it is shows that we are in a credible position. It must also be pointed out that we have ongoing serial testing and are, therefore, picking up community cases that are not necessarily meat plant cases.