Dr. Ronan Glynn:

The HSE is developing a model of care around long Covid at the moment. We can provide a written update on that if that would be of use.

Regarding masks, the advice is still clear that anyone 13 years or older who has a case of Covid or is a close contact of a Covid case should wear a medical-grade or FFP2 mask and that children aged nine to 12 should wear a well-fitted mask. As Dr. Holohan rightly said, it is inevitable over these few weeks that we will see a reduction in compliance with some of the core measures as people sense that we are moving on. Equally, however, I reiterate that those measures were left in place over these weeks because we feel they have a very significant role to play as we try to transition out of where we are at the moment and to get to a more stable level of incidence across the population.

On the Senator's question on weekly testing, another point that is perhaps not that well known is that throughout the pandemic, in addition to the weekly service that we did at population level, we also did very regular focus group work with all the various groups impacted in different ways by the pandemic. All of that qualitative information, whether from parents, older people, younger people, people with disabilities or people in particular vulnerable groups, was fed in, as well as the results of the surveys that we did on a weekly basis.