Covid-19 (Health): Statements
Dail Éireann — 2020-05-21
============================================================

Gino Kenny (PBP), Dublin Mid-West

I am sharing time with Deputy Paul Murphy. I have two questions for the Minister. The first concerns testing of front-line healthcare workers. Healthcare workers across the world have suffered a terrible toll in fighting this pandemic. In Britain, 200 NHS workers - doctors, nurses, care assistants and auxiliary staff - have died. It has been a terrible toll. In Ireland, more than a quarter of front-line workers have contracted the virus. That is 25% and that has also taken a huge toll.
It takes three days for a front-line worker to be tested and for the result to come back. Does the Minister envisage a time when the period relating to testing front-line workers will be much shorter? It has to be under 24 hours. I offer the example of a nurse who does a shift, finishes work and is then tested for Covid-19.
Does the Minister envisage that nurse having to work his or her next shift, which may be the next day, without having received a test result? It seems impossible that this could be allowed.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-05-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:18+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-05-21