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

I thank the Deputy for asking this important question and I will do my best to clarify the situation. The HSE commenced a programme of serial testing in meat and food production plants on 21 August. Since then, 13,000 tests have been carried out and 34 cases were detected. The testing of staff at meat and food processing plants has not been cancelled, it has been rescheduled for next week. That decision was made by the HSE. I do not know at what point the various Ministers were informed.

The HSE carries out surveillance testing every few weeks in places where there is a high risk of an outbreak, such as nursing homes, direct provision centres and meat and food processing plants. The HSE is essentially hunting for the virus and testing people who have no symptoms. The number of positive tests that have come back is very small.

At times of high demand, when many patients with symptoms need to be tested, those people have to be prioritised and that is what has happened in the past couple of days. There has been a surge in demand for tests from people with symptoms who must be prioritised. Of course, if somebody in a nursing home, meat plant or direct provision accommodation centre has symptoms, they are also prioritised for obvious reasons.

As we are speaking about Covid-19, I want to take the opportunity to welcome the statement made by the Sinn Féin vice president, Michelle O'Neill, expressing her regret for the Bobby Storey funeral and the events around it. In her own words, it undermined public health messaging in the North. It is late but I think it is timely because it comes at a time when we head into the winter, when Covid instance rates are much higher in Northern Ireland than Ireland and when Belfast has a higher incidence than any other city in Ireland. While I can understand people paying their respects in the streets, I cannot understand or accept the political rally in Milltown Cemetery. This was no graveside oration; Mr. Storey was cremated on the other side of town. It was a political rally in the middle of a pandemic, organised by Sinn Féin and other republicans. Deputy Doherty spoke at that rally and I want to know now if he will apologise for that and whether he will be held to account for it. We have seen a dozen resignations as a result of "golfgate" in the past few weeks. Will anyone in Sinn Féin be resigning as a consequence of this? Does the Deputy believe that Sinn Féin republicans are some sort of higher caste who do not have to obey the same laws as anyone else and follow public health guidance?

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