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

I thank the Deputy for his constructive raising of this issue and his questions. I accept fully his broad thesis regarding the need for Irish-specific research. I read the article to which Deputy Naughten referred regarding Dr. Paddy Mallon. I think it was in the Sunday Independenton Sunday, and concerned the need to do some more work on the specific data emanating from Irish sources. That work is under way in my Department in respect of doing more detailed statistical analysis of a range of variables concerning the virus.

We are learning all along the way. This lockdown is not the same as the first lockdown. The schools are open, and we pay tribute to all those involved in the school communities for the work they are doing. We will continue to work with the school communities to keep our schools open in the best interests of our children and students, so that they do not become long-term victims of this virus. The construction sector is also operating, given the necessity, from a social perspective, to continue to build homes to address homelessness and to deal with the needs of those needing affordable and social housing. Those are areas with long waiting lists. The first lockdown had a major impact on construction and resulted in the country not being able to fulfil the targets on the housing front that we had at the beginning of the year.

What we want to do now is get the figures for the virus down really low, and we should maintain a real collective national effort to do that. That will give us more flexibility at the end of November to see how we will manage the following months. We must learn lessons and use the research to adjust our behaviours, as a country and a people, in a way that is consistent with trying to keep the economy open for as long as we possibly can to protect livelihoods, but above all protect public health.

Turning to the testing situation, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, ECDC, shows Ireland among the highest ranked countries in Europe for processing high volumes of tests.

The capacity per week is 120,000. More than 112,000 were swabbed last week and to date more than 1.4 million tests have been carried out in laboratories across Ireland.

On the test and trace systems we do need more personnel. We are recruiting very actively now for contact tracing. There are some 650 people now working in contact tracing centres across the country, of whom 344 are new recruits and the rest are redeployed staff. A further 450 will be recruited so there will be a dedicated, separate workforce of approximately 800 people working in contact tracing centres. Currently, more than 1,000 staff are working on swabbing and this is also made up of redeployed and new staff. There is continued new recruitment for swabbing purposes.

A total of €650 million has been allocated for testing and tracing next year. It is no small sum of money but it is vital in our battle against Covid-19.

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