Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will invite Dr. Tony Holohan, the CMO, to our committee. I ask him here publicly to engage with our committee and put his arguments on antigen testing. The purpose of the committee is to get to the facts. The missing piece of the jigsaw at this stage is that we need the CMO to appear before the committee to give his views on antigen testing. I ask for that to happen very shortly.

I wish Dr. Mina well with his soon-to-be-born child. Would it be fair to say that he believes that speed trumps perfection? One of our fellow Irishmen, Dr. Ryan in the WHO, has always made that point. Dr. Holohan's point that antigen testing is only 50% accurate has gone into the lexicon. Dr. Mina has dealt with that very well today.

In layman's terms, my understanding is that Covid has a 14-day cycle. For the first couple of days someone is not that infectious. There is a peak period in between when the person is highly infectious and in the following days towards the latter end, they are not as infectious. PCR testing will probably detect the Covid infection throughout that period. Antigen testing will pick it up when it is at its most infectious. Therefore, Dr. Mina's thesis is that with antigen testing if it is 50% accurate that means it is picking up the cohort who are most infectious and it is much faster. His basic point is that an antigen test taken pre-departure is far more effective than a PCR test taken 72 hours prior to arrival.

Dr. Mina had a very interesting exchange with Professor Phillip Nolan who spoke about snake oil regarding antigen testing. Obviously, we saw the discourse they had on social media. I ask Dr. Mina to dispel that notion about it being snake oil. Does he regard antigen testing as complementary to PCR testing? Does he see it as standing alone? Does he believe it is more effective than PCR testing? What role can it play as we move into a world increasingly vaccinated against Covid? What practical things can we do in Ireland to get PCR testing to play a vital role in the fight against Covid? If we do not have antigen testing, are we putting the population at greater risk of catching the infection than by having antigen testing?