The two letters are published. The NPHET-----

No. The NPHET letters are published. That is the situation. It is either a graduated response from level to level or one goes the full hog. The issue on the exponential growth is whether one should close everything down now, with no guarantees at the end of the four weeks, although one would hope that it would come down significantly. The chances are it would come down to some degree but the impact on the economy would be quite enormous. The Deputy referred to the shock for some people. Self-employed people, hairdr…

In response to Deputies Danny and Michael Healy-Rae, nobody in this House wants to close pubs and they need to accept that. Nobody here wants to close pubs. Do the Deputies honestly believe that people wake up in the morning asking how we can close more pubs? No one believes that. No one wants to do that. The real issue is that there was a recommendation that we go to level 5, which would have closed everything bar a number of essential services, or we would go along in accordance with the plan. There is an exponen…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 5, inclusive, together. The economic division of my Department assists me and the Government in developing and implementing policy across relevant areas including economic growth and job creation, infrastructure and housing and climate action and social dialogue. This work is focused, in particular, on the delivery of commitments in the programme for Government, for example, the development of a new national economic plan as well as co-ordination of issues which will cut across…

Was I?

I must resist the attempt to underplay and undermine the progress that has been made in ramping up key aspects of the health service. The testing and tracing capacity has been significantly enhanced with an onshore laboratory capacity for 100,000 tests and 2,000 per day offshore. We are currently increasing capacity onshore for November and December and we will continue to have offshore capacity during the winter period. As such, there has been a very significant ramping up of the testing situation. A total of 90% …

The budget will hopefully deal with some of the issues to which Deputies are referring but I cannot pre-empt it today and I do not intend to.

I will come back to it later.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 6 to 9, inclusive, 24 and 149 together. The bulk of the spend in 2020 to date has been to deal with the Covid-19 emergency. Of the €11.4 million spent to date, €4.2 million was on advertising in publications and €5.8 million on broadcast advertising. Since March, my Department has co-ordinated communications for the whole-of-government response to the pandemic and this necessitated expenditure on a broad range of targeted public information campaigns. The overall communications stra…

The data are being published. The data on ICUs are being published.

Information on the case numbers is published on an ongoing basis. The NPHET letters are being published.

I am talking about the letters-----

-----that were the key issue in terms of Thursday's advice and Sunday's advice. They have been published.

Everybody should wear masks as often as they possibly can.

The guidance is out there-----

-----on masks.

There was no bank holiday date in my mind yesterday. I do not know where that came from. There was a lot more on my mind yesterday than the awarding of a bank holiday. I do not know where that came from.

It was not in my head.

There was a more fundamental issue about level 3 and level 5. Those were the issues yesterday. To respond to Deputy Tóibín's points, I am perplexed by the suggestion. There is no media monitoring of Government criticism by anybody in the Government Information Service or the Department of the Taoiseach. There is no monitoring of any criticism by political parties. That does not happen. No public servant or anybody else is doing this type of work. The idea that advertisements are being put out to stop the bad news s…

There could have been a contract that was entered into earlier. I do not know. I will check it out for the Deputy and get an answer on it. Perhaps contracts were entered into in advance for a set period. I do not know with regard to the specific issue raised by the Deputy on CervicalCheck advertisements. The bulk of communications has been on Covid-19 with regard to the various roadmaps, which predate the new Government, and letting people know what was reopening and when, and the issues pertaining to that. Likewis…