Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----to deal with this. I do not know why the Deputy does not believe the leadership team in the HSE. She takes umbrage at other situations, but she seems to disagree consistently with the leadership team in the HSE which consistently says to me, because I make it my business to check if they have capacity to deal with the current situation, "Yes."

On testing, the supply at the moment is more than capable of meeting the demand. It is one of the few countries still in a position to meet demand and is exceeding demand right now. That includes all the serial testing. Significant progress has been made on testing over the last five or six months, but it never gets acknowledged by Deputy McDonald or by others. Of course, we can do better and can go further, but testing across the board has made a quantum leap forward in recent months.

An additional 810 general beds have been put into the system. By the time the winter plan, costing about €600 million, is implemented there will be a further 1,400 beds in total if the 800 beds are added to 590 beds that will be provided under the winter initiative. By any yardstick in such a short space of time that is significant progress. It gives us the capability and capacity not just to deal with the impact of Covid, but the non-Covid services as well, which was one of the factors in our decision yesterday. We did not want to shut down non-Covid services given the challenges they are currently facing.

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