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

I thank the Deputy. I broadly agree that there is a greater role for antigen testing in Ireland into the future but we have to be guided by public health advice on this. NPHET, as the Deputy will aware, have not been particularly confident about the accuracy of antigen testing and it believes that in many instances it does not meet what the manufacturers say. NPHET has updated its guidance in the past number of days so antigen testing is now going to be used more extensively for outbreaks and for symptomatic cases, and it has changed the definition of a case in Ireland in Ireland to take into account the fact that somebody may test positive on an antigen test and not just on a PCR test. That is a significant change, which has happened only in the past couple of days. Using the antigen test to screen people, for example, for travel or to attend events is a whole other issue and the evidence at the moment is that antigen testing is effective in symptomatic cases but not so much for screening, but that may change.

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