Ms Niamh O'Beirne:

We are looking at all of the various tests. With regard to antigen testing, we are looking at the settings where it is best used. We have studied the tests themselves and samples. We have spoken to the vendors. We have access to them as a country. We want to use them in conjunction with PCR testing. With our public health leads, we are looking at what is the best setting to deploy antigen testing. We have discussed this with some of the industry groups where we do serial testing at present. We will use the tests with the best and most accurate results on positives and negatives.

We have looked at LAMP technology and we have compared LAMP results to other results and we have found it has taken longer to get the positives out of LAMP because they have to be tested twice. We are looking at all of these things. We are also looking at pooling, which is another form of testing. This is having more positive results for us. All of these are going on at the same time. We are also looking at new swabs that speed up the testing cycles. We have access to everything that is available internationally and we have good coverage of all of this with our testing laboratory task force.