I will just make this one point. I asked the Chief Medical Officer and his team, through the oversight committee this morning, if we can get a quicker response on this. It is currently being clinically validated on the ground. That could be a very important supplemental resource to our testing regime by the time the lockdown is over.

I believe that measures like this should be announced publicly and in advance by agencies. I have always been of that view. People are working under pressure and they advised of this measure. There was nothing secretive about it. When people get a message from the HSE it will be quite transparent. It is interesting that Deputy Kelly has suggested that we separate out the process from the HSE. I do not know where that idea is coming from. It is a bit late in the day in this pandemic to consider that.

We are where we are in terms of the recruitment processes. There will be close to 800 people recruited for contact tracing. Testing and contact tracing are connected. We are testing more than we ever tested.

We missed a lot of cases in the first phase of the pandemic when people were not tested because we did not have a testing system to the same degree we have now. People were positive and were walking around not having been tested, and they were infecting others. We know that this happened.

When there are higher volumes of testing and much higher community transmission-----

-----by definition, there will be huge pressure on the contact tracing system. That said, I do not think we can now start separating out processes and so on.

People are being recruited. We are creating a permanent workforce as opposed to what happened in the first phase when staff were taken out of physical therapy and occupational therapy.

I do not believe that was a good utilisation of personnel. It had to be done, however, in the emergency we had at the time.

I did not get the text from the HSE.

The only guaranteed way of preventing lockdowns in the future is human behaviour. The virus spreads when people congregate. That is, unfortunately, the truth of this virus. It is very challenging for people generally because we all have to do things we would not normally do. It has upended our lives when it comes to the normal practices of daily life. That is the unfortunate reality of the virus and that has to feed into any strategic approach towards it. I have been honest and candid about this. I do not believe a…

The testing has been dramatically scaled up recently. Contact tracing is coming under tremendous pressure because of the high level of community transmission of the virus and the number of positive cases that have emerged. The HSE is saying it has reconfigured the call structure to enable it to deal with 1,500 positive cases per day this week. That is what the HSE is saying as of now. Members referred to what other countries are doing and I believe other testing technologies should be considered. HIQA conducted a m…

I thank the Deputy for his comments. I recall that in the summer when we introduced restrictions that were equivalent to level 3 in counties Laois, Offaly and Kildare, which people may forget as things are moving so quickly, there was anger at the time, and understandably so. Those level 3 restrictions had an impact on that occasion, in terms of reducing the spread of the virus in those locations. Interestingly, I just saw comments from the chief medical officer in Northern Ireland that the measures taken in the De…

I do not have the specific unit cost of each of the deals. It is not as high as one might have thought or as might conventionally be the case. One has to be cúramach about what one says publicly about it, but there is a genuine effort being made here. That said, the difference here has been the advanced purchase process. In the US, the government there has been doing it. There has been a big debate there in the context of the presidential election etc. and that is why the companies came out strongly and said they w…

Notwithstanding other issues, I have been engaged with, and in regular contact with, workers. On Debenhams, I am concerned about the situation and would like to have it resolved without any further pressures on the workers, given that they have been picketing for quite a long time in trying conditions and in adverse weather. There have been constraints on the degree to which the Government can interfere in a liquidation process and, indeed, in a legal process. That said, the Tánaiste and the Ministers of State at t…

That is not the way to proceed either. I have no difficulty asking the Minister to meet the Deputy because he has met the 221+ group. His understanding was that he could proceed with the tribunal because a lot of people were complaining about the delay in getting it up and running. That has been a complaint for a number of months. That was the original, understandable and justifiable complaint. For the past while we have been doing everything we possibly can to get the nuts and bolts in place-----

-----to get the tribunal established and do things in a non-adversarial way. I will talk to the Minister. If there are issues, they can be dealt with and resolved.

To put a context on what I said yesterday and what I have been saying for the past while about the Bill, it is caused by, and necessary to deal with, the very pressing deadline for the winding up of the commission itself, which could allow for the destruction or non-availability of the documents in question.

Deputy Gannon asked a question. I would like an opportunity to reply without the ongoing heckling from the Deputy opposite, which is not constructive. There could be further legislation. There has been an ongoing issue, apart from this issue, with access to records, which was debated in the previous Dáil with the then Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and which was not quite resolved. In my view, there is a desire to try to get this resolved after this legislation, which preserves the records, is dealt with. …

In my view, the action taken this morning is not necessary and should not happen right now, but calling in KPMG on its own will not solve this. In the first phase, when efforts were made to resolve this by some parties, €1 million emerged on the table out of the process. How do the Deputies think that €1 million would be realised?

We can keep looking for declarations of this and declarations of that. That will not resolve the problem. The Government has to make sure that whatever happens does not create new precedents elsewhere or allow certain employments and certain rogue employers, for want of a better term, in the future to just land everything on the State. That cannot happen either. I am not saying that is the case here. The company is in liquidation. I do not like the way the workers have been treated from the get-go. There should be …