Ms Alison Coleman:

To respond to the Deputy's question, the contractors in question had been recruited and on-boarded as part of our response to the Covid backlog. The contracts had reached the stage where, legally, we were not in a position to continually extend them. We are bound by fixed-term legislation. As such, we were in a place where we were at six weeks. We were in a really good position so we felt it was timely that those contracts ended, in line with the cessation date on those contracts. However, within a number of months, it became clear with increasing waiting times that the capacity decrease, in addition to possible pipelines of demand that we had not really factored into our demand modelling in the past, needed to be looked at again. Our immediate response, as my colleague Mr. Walsh alluded to, was to go to our Department and we got our head count increased to 130 testers. The competition was an open national one to which we received quite a good response. Even with that measure, however, we are still not meeting demand.

We find ourselves in a difficult environment. We ran a competition for temporary testers and received more than 450 applications. We now have a panel which we are working our way through. We are at a sensitive stage at the moment, with offers being made to many people. We hope to have 170 testers by the end of the year. The absolute best-case scenario, as Mr. Walsh referred to, is 186 testers. That is where we hope to be.

We have found that the demand is largely in urban areas, in Dublin and its surrounding counties, including Kildare, and Cork. We ran a nationwide competition and are offering positions in parts of the country where demand suggests we need more capacity. We have found that a number of people have refused positions because they are not in a position to find accommodation in those urban areas to allow them to move. They are unable even to find digs to stay in for the week and return to their families at the weekend. The situation is not ideal but that is the position in which we find ourselves. We might not meet the golden number of 75 even though we will do our best to do so. That is the challenging recruitment area in which we find ourselves.

While I have the floor and may not have it again-----