Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the good wishes and the compliments he gave me earlier. I am very glad I have no responsibility for the public health response or the contract tracing. The witnesses who were here yesterday are the people to whom the Deputy probably should have addressed those questions.

Regarding the payments, there does not need to be an extension because the law allows people to self-isolate for two periods of two weeks, which is a total of four weeks. They do not need to apply for extensions; they just need to keep giving us the certs. As for people who are asymptomatic, for as long as they are isolating, as long as their GPs send in the certs with the category "unfit for work due to Covid" marked, we will continue to look after them. There is no limit on the length of time somebody can be sick with Covid because, as we know, different people recover in different ways and the virus affects some people very mildly and some people, unfortunately, not so mildly. There is therefore no cut-off time for keeping people on the payment. What I will do, and what might be interesting, is to get the Deputy the data on the people and the numbers of people who have applied for illness benefit because of self-isolation and those who have applied because they are actually not well.

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