Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It seems to me that the Taoiseach is making it up as he goes along. If the Government was serious about protecting public health, employment and people's quality of life, it would measure up to a commitment made months ago that 100,000 tests would be carried out per week and that people would be in receipt of their results within 24 hours.

I have the Covid app on my phone. It might interest the Taoiseach to know that over the past seven days, fewer than 75,000 tests were carried out. This is months on from a commitment to hit the target of 100,000 tests. To keep people safe, to keep the economy on track, to ensure that we have some quality of life, including social opportunities, it is my view that we need more than 100,000 tests per week, but the Government has not yet even reached that target.

The truth is that when trouble flared in the midlands because of meat processing plants, and when numbers started to climb, by the Taoiseach's own admission and by his own Minister's admission, they did not have the testing and tracing capacity to catch up and there was a huge time lag. It is very telling that, in today's plan that the Taoiseach has issued, of 59 pages, just one of them addresses the issue of testing and tracing - the most central part of the plan and the Taoiseach has failed. I have to say to him that people in Dublin in particular today, but also throughout the State, are frustrated with the Taoiseach's inability to see the most basic thing, which is to get testing and tracing right and then allow us the opportunity for all else to follow.

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