Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. On the second point, HIQA has done a health technology assessment on rapid testing, which the Deputy may have seen. It was not as positive or favourable as I might have hoped it would be. There are definitely pros and cons to rapid testing and NPHET is very much working on that at the moment. I cannot say it will be ready by 1 December and that is probably unlikely, but it is being worked on.

In regard to the first question, things are going very well. The number of new cases is falling faster than we thought it would, and the positivity rate is falling faster than we thought it would and it was down to something over 3% the other day, which was really encouraging. What we are saying very definitely is that level 5 is for six weeks. We want to get the number of cases down as low as possible before easing restrictions. We do not have a decision date yet to tell people what we move to on 1 December. I take the Deputy’s point that businesses need to prepare and families need to be prepared and they will need a few days’ notice, but we have no date as yet.

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