Covid-19 Tests Dail Éireann — 2021-07-13 ============================================================ Verona Murphy (IND), Wexford I thank the Minister. On 8 May 2020 I requested from the Tánaiste a road map for testing and tracing. He was acting Taoiseach at that time and said he would indeed ask the HSE to produce a road map and on 14 May we saw the road map. He said: Our mission is to get people back to work, get businesses open again and get the economy humming so that we have the resources we need to build a better society... [W]e will maintain an intense focus on the virus and follow four guiding principles: isolate, test, trace and treat, so that we can quickly react if things go wrong and if [we see] an increase in cases... The crucial thing is to keep doing the right things, to stick to the strategy and maintain our focus... At that time we had 234 contact tracers. I am glad to hear we now have 930 but I want to know whether they are full-time, that is, working continuously for the 12 hours and what number of people do they trace individually. --- 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/2021-07-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-07-13