Mr. Éamonn Donnelly:

I would like to comment on this. During the spike in April, when almost 6,000 cases occurred among health workers, the numbers caused by deficits in PPE were surprisingly low. Most of the transmissions were through the workplace in the work setting, as Ms Ní Sheaghdha said, in a very risky environment. We were speaking about swabbing a few minutes ago. A number of our people who would not be considered front-line workers and stepped into the front line to do swabbing got infected.

It is a highly contagious environment but the numbers of infections caused by inadequate PPE, or a lack of PPE, were surprisingly low in that April period. There was a huge problem at the outset and, as Ms Ní Sheaghdha said, the trade unions moved assertively to try to correct that. The totality of the work environment needs to be observed. I would not want anybody to think that if we bulk up on their PPE arrangements this will be okay because it will not. There are a number of factors.