Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best to answer as many of Deputy Kelly's questions as I can. The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, has informed me that he intends to lay the agreement with the private hospitals before the Dáil. I am not sure when he will be able to do that but that is his intention.

On testing, Deputy Shortall said there should be engagement at the highest level of government with the big companies. That has happened and is ongoing. I spent a decent amount of my time over the past couple of days and weeks ringing CEOs of pharmaceutical and medical devices companies asking, imploring and encouraging them to make more equipment available to us. That continues.

On the reagent, although it has been cited otherwise, I am advised patents and intellectual property are not the issue. The issue with reagents, which are made by many different companies in competition with each other, is simply down to massive demand versus limited supply. In the conversations I have had with the HSE and the CEOs, I have learned that patents and intellectual property are not the reason for the lack of supply. It is that the huge demand exceeds the supply.

On testing, we are not where we would like to be, nor where we expected to be at this stage, but things are improving and have improved a lot in the past week or so. Relative to other countries, we are doing very well. More than 90,000 tests have now been completed, covering roughly 2% of the population. We are very much in the top tier of countries when it comes to testing but we are going to test more. The backlog that existed is now largely cleared. There is demand for roughly 3,000 tests per day, which we have capacity to do. There is capacity to do more but the next step will be to widen the case definition again. When the case definition is widened again, we may run into problems again if there is a big spike in demand. We need to be honest with people about that and to be frank that we will have problems on and off when it comes to testing over the next weeks and months.

At various points over the past month, there have been shortages of swabs. At various points, there have been shortages of testing kits, reagents and laboratory capacity. It is almost like whack-a-mole. There are all these capacity constraints, and each time we try to widen one, another one arises. I ask people to bear in mind that this is a virus that did not exist three or four months ago. It did not have a name two months ago. We have been able to test it for only two or three months. This country, every other country and every health system has had to ramp up testing very rapidly in a way that would not normally be done. We are under constraints as a result. We have 90,000 tests done, however. We are very much in the top tier in the EU, or in the top four or five, in terms of the number of tests done per million of the population.

I was asked whether we can publish a catalogue of what personal protective equipment has arrived. If we have that information, we will be able to share it with the House. I have seen tables of what has arrived and what is due to arrive but I do not know how accurate they are. That is just the nature the environment we are in. If we are able to share the tables with Deputy Kelly, I will certainly have no difficulty doing so.

On banks and insurance companies, engagement is ongoing with the banks. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, is leading on that. Perhaps he will be able to report on it a little later. The same applies to engagement with the insurance companies.

On the leaving certificate, the Minister for Education and Skills announced last week that the leaving certificate would go ahead but that it would be postponed until late July or early August of this year. The view is that there will be sufficient time then to correct the papers and allow this year’s current sixth year students to begin their college terms. That will probably be late. It will probably be October or November. As soon we have more information and certainty around that, the Minister will put it in the public domain. We very much appreciate that there are 60,000 students preparing for their leaving certificate examinations who have been very badly disrupted by Covid-19, who are very worried about this, and who want certainty about their exams and future.

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