Mr. Marcus Keane:

The HSE stated back in 2020 that we have treated 5,000 people with DAAs and we are on track for elimination by 2030 based on that. I have no reason to doubt that that is absolutely true, or was true at that time. The challenge now is whether that is still true. When you start to treat something and start to have a push for it, there are a group of people already engaged in the system who you know require treatment. It is relatively easy to reach that group of people. The challenge arises when you have dealt with that group of people because then you have to try to reach the group of people who may not know they have hepatitis C. This is what the 2021 paper was looking at. It looked at a number of developed countries and could see Ireland being well behind these targets.