Professor Mary Keogan:

It is important to consider what is involved in validation. As Dr. Glynn stated, it is not as simple as turning up with a couple of thousand antigen tests. We need to go through planning and ensure that the study is adequately powered in terms of epidemiology so that we get useful information. There are international guidelines about the size of the cohort required. There are problems with validating in asymptomatic cases. It is very difficult to get the number of positives required. The ethical and consent issues need to be considered. The scheme needs to be set up in a safe way that looks after the health and safety of the people performing the test and of the people being tested. There needs to be GDPR compliance with the gathering of appropriate data and the follow-up.

It took a large team of people to do this work. Reading the report, the Chairman may feel it was easy to write and could have been done more quickly. We worked on this for seven days per week since last October, though, so I beg to differ. It required an enormous amount of work. I thank all of the participants who allowed themselves to be double swabbed as well as the scientists from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the scientists employed by the HSE who did the work. It was very labour intensive.