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

I thank the Taoiseach for again rehearsing the figures for testing. I am aware that the target of 100,000 set in the springtime has now been met and surpassed. However, in the words of the WHO, "You will never test too much", and that capacity will need to be built on.

I asked about contact tracing. The facts are that this system collapsed over the weekend, which is extremely alarming, happening as it does on the eve of us moving into another lockdown. I made the point to the Taoiseach that unless we get the testing capacity right and keep developing it, and unless we have a tracing system that is efficient enough to turn around in a 24-hour period, we are storing up big trouble for ourselves. We are heading into another lockdown and all of us, including the Taoiseach, know what that entails. We need to come out of this six-week experience with a state-of-the-art gold-standard testing-and-tracing system. That means a 24-hour turnaround universally for testing and a 24-hour turnaround universally for tracing. That must be our objective and we are far short of that now.

I want to hear from the Taoiseach today that he accepts that we need to get to that gold standard, that the Government will produce a plan to get us there over the next six weeks and that he will report to the House every week on the progress made to meet that objective.

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