Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In my area of County Carlow we have been responsible in keeping the numbers down. I also want to congratulate the older people because their numbers have seriously decreased. That is important. Again, the elderly are playing a great part. I mention that today is international older people's day and fair play to them. They have done everything they could and have stuck by the guidelines. They have done their best and we need to congratulate them.

On Tuesday at the Covid committee I asked if there was an active recruitment campaign for a dedicated test and trace workforce and I was told there was. However, I was contacted by someone who tried to apply for such a position and he was told the recruitment was internal. Are we recruiting? Who are we recruiting? What is the timescale on recruiting? It is vital that we employ those who returned to answer Ireland's call and are now unemployed. It is vital that we recruit people with several languages. We are a multinational country and we cannot use language barriers as an excuse for not tracing properly.

We need to get in front of Covid-19 and not continue to react to it. There may still be things we do not know but we have learned an awful lot in the last seven months. I repeat that the HSE staff and all those front-line services, our advisers and all the public health officials have done a tremendous job so let us do what we must and learn what we must. It is a learning curve.

I wish to talk about schools. With regard to school cases, a total of 4,328 children and teachers have been tested for Covid-19.

The rate of positive results in schools has been 1.9%. If we are to live with Covid, how are we to reduce the number of negative tests and target more accurately? I would be very careful and wary of that. It is great that our schoolchildren are back in school because everybody needed it. Whether it is mentally or physically, we all need a proper roadmap in the sense that we know there are supports available for people who need mental health services and other services.

With all the talk about living with Covid, we seem to have forgotten the other major disruption in our lives, which also has a relationship to our food industry and supply, and that is Brexit. Beef farmers are living without any certainty on beef prices and markets. Our economy has suffered major losses because of Covid-19 and we are faced with potential tariffs that could cost €740 million.

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