Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I refer to some of the other issues the Deputy raised. In relation to the HSE and contact tracing in Dublin, he will have seen that is a public health decision. The public health authorities have made various decisions at various times on operational matters. They made decisions in late September on the operation of full contact tracing within our schools. At that point we had thousands of children who were excluded from school as close contacts because they did not have Covid symptoms and they did not develop Covid while they were stood down from school for ten days or more. There was a view at that time that it was not sustainable going forward that we would have such a large cohort of students out of school. Notwithstanding that, as I said that was a public health decision.

Another public health decision has been enacted as of Monday, which is on the roll-out of antigen testing. I want to acknowledge, as I said earlier, that there has been extraordinary buy-in from parents and guardians in that. We have seen that in the early days. I want to acknowledge that principals and school leaders have been hugely co-operative and positive in relation to its development for the schools. Many of them have been looking for antigen testing and the HSE has ensured that is in place.

Principals are being asked that when there is a positive case in a pod, that parent will inform the principal and the principal then informs the other five sets of parents within that pod. After that it is entirely a matter for parents. Parents apply to the call centre for the antigen tests, and as I said there has been an extraordinary buy-in to that in the last number of days. Equally, that is a measure for primary schools within the specialist schools setting as the Minister of State will detail. The contact tracing system remains in place. These are public health decisions that are implemented by the public health bodies. This includes contact tracing and antigen testing as we have pointed out earlier.