Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The issue is capacity when the numbers start to grow. We have had an average of approximately 600 cases per day over the past week. When we had 234 contact tracers, we were seeing 1,200 cases per day. I appreciate that officials were able to handle what happened in Dungarvan with the test, trace and isolate system. I am asking about what happens in future, when we get above 1,200 cases per day, as that was the level at which it collapsed last year. What will be our capacity to deal with this when we come under pressure if we have current levels of tracing? What happens if each person has five close contacts, which, I imagine, is a minimum number? It would mean that we would have to contact 3,000 people on a daily basis. This is why I am interested. I want to know that this is a robust system, that it will not collapse and that we will not have to go back into lockdown because we did not resource our testing, tracing and isolation capability.

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