Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

People are raising all kinds of different issues. The longer we continue in this health crisis, the deeper we get into an economic crisis as well. Practically every aspect of life has been impacted by the virus and the associated economic recession we are in. I want to take us back to stage 1 in this Government's response to this virus, namely, the strategy we are pursuing in this country to contain the virus. That strategy is about testing, tracing and isolating. Some of us feel like a broken record in commenting on this because the issue has not been addressed by the Government in the kind of scale that is required for us to be successful in beating this crisis and to be able to progress through the roadmap that has been set out. There remain major question marks over our ability to achieve either of those goals.

It has been set out from the beginning that the strategy will be to test at the level of about 15,000 people per day and to have quick tracing and isolation. That is the way to control the virus. The Taoiseach can quote figures from other countries but other countries are using different strategies. We should look at the other island countries that have been using very successful strategies, such as New Zealand and Iceland which clamped down completely on traffic in and out of the country. We did the opposite and we made serious mistakes in allowing travel from particularly dangerous areas to continue unabated. To a large extent, we are still allowing that to happen, with movement of people back and forth. We saw in a news bulletin yesterday a report about an Aer Lingus flight where social distancing was not respected.

Is this continuing? How many people are coming into this country in those circumstances? Where are they coming from? Weak arrangements have been put in place at our airports in terms of handing out a leaflet and asking people to give details and their telephone number, but people are simply not co-operating with that.

Our strategy, for better or worse, is a test, trace and isolate strategy. I do not know why the Taoiseach is playing that down so much, why he has not been upfront in telling us what the situation is with the numbers and the reasons we have not met the target numbers we were supposed to reach weeks ago and why he will not explain to us and the general public what the issues are with that. I noticed last week, when public attention was focusing on this, that the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health went out of their way to clarify that they were not talking about 15,000 tests per day but a capacity to do 15,000 tests per day. Why is the Taoiseach making that distinction? All the medical advice is that we need to be testing at least 15,000 per day and we need to be able to trace quickly and isolate where necessary. Why is the Taoiseach going against medical advice in that regard? Why is he not explaining what the position is with that strategy?

The Chief Medical Officer, CMO, has made it clear that there is an adequate level of testing taking place in hospitals and in respect of healthcare staff and, belatedly, staff and residents in nursing homes. The difficulty is, as the CMO has pointed out, that we do not understand the behaviour of the virus at community level, and we will not be able to understand it until there is an adequate level of testing and tracing. We are very far from getting on top of this virus. The CMO has said we must be doing that number of tests and getting the results very quickly. The difficulty with proceeding with the roadmap is that the three week spacing the Taoiseach is proposing between the different phases will not allow time under the current arrangements for cases to be detected, tested, traced and isolated. We will not have that data back in order to determine whether it is safe to continue to the next stage.

A number of prominent medics and scientists in this country have said that it is likely there are hundreds of thousands of cases in the community here. We have no handle on those numbers at present. All we know is the narrow number of people who have been tested. We know something about their cases, but we know nothing about community cases. I believe the Taoiseach is jumping the gun in this regard. Everybody likes to have good news and to talk about returning to normal, but we do not have the right strategy to allow us to do that safely. The big fear is that there will be a second wave of the virus, which would be a disaster for everybody. It would be a disaster for our health, our jobs and our business. Just try telling people three or six weeks into the roadmap that we have to go back to stage 1, which is what we will have to do unless we get the strategy right.

We talk about this and then we look at what is happening in the real world. The Government put in place a very expensive infrastructure for testing and tracing. It recruited hundreds of thousands of people to engage in that important work. However, in recent weeks many of the test centres have been closed down. In fact, the big ones such as Croke Park and Tallaght Stadium were closed all weekend and for a half day on Tuesday. Can the Taoiseach explain why this is happening? This is the most urgent thing we must do, yet we are standing down staff who are ready and able to do that important work.

Places are closed. As far as I understand it, most of the test centres are working at a capacity of about 50% to 60%. Why is that? At a time when we desperately need to do more testing, why is that not being done? Will the Taoiseach please explain that today? It is fundamental to everything else that is being done. What is happening puzzles me greatly. I do not know whether anybody can explain why, when we need to test and trace, these are not happening.

On the roadmap, I am really concerned that there is no accountability and transparency regarding those criteria that will be used for moving on to the next stage. I will leave the Taoiseach the next two minutes to explain why it seems he is not prepared to pursue this strategy.

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