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

I discussed this earlier. Essentially, the plan is to build up a permanent workforce of contact tracers, close to 800, whose sole function will be contact tracing. In the intervening period, as of this week, the HSE said it has restructured its call system to make sure that its contact tracers can deal with 1,500 positive cases a day. On the swabbing side, 1,000 swabbers will be the permanent workforce in community swabbing, and there will be up to 800 in contact tracing. That is the plan. The HSE has been recruiting for quite some time to get the numbers up to that level, which is way in excess of what was there in the first phase. The testing is up to 115,000 now. The testing capacity is at 120,000. Community transmission is at a high level and was at a particularly high level over the weekend, which did put contact tracing under very significant strain, resulting in the measures that were taken.

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