Dr. Tony Holohan:

Those are all relevant points. The consideration of those matters and how these materials are paid and provided for is generally a consideration which is separate to our work. We recommend the who, when and how, but not about payment. There will be some exceptions to that, such as when we are talking about cases and contacts, since the HSE has a provision to supply antigen tests to those individuals because we had specific advice about how to move from testing contacts through PCR testing to testing contacts through antigen testing. We wanted to ensure there was not an impediment to the take-up of that because it was putting substantial pressure on our PCR system. That is why we made that recommendation. Free provision of those tests for those reasons was important to take the pressure off the PCR system in the weeks running into Christmas. There have been other attempts at measures to make some elements of the pandemic response that the Senator mentioned more affordable. NPHET has not got into making advice on the question of payment for some of these things outside of its guidance.