It will be interesting to see if there is any response on that point. The other issue I want to raise is the question of mental health services and the review or refresh of A Vision for Change. Several of us have raised this with the Minister previously and he has responded that while the review was completed and passed by Government and all of that, going back to December or January, that it is not his intention to publish the review because he would be criticised for it. Today, a letter was sent to the Minister f…

I appreciate that. The Minister will appreciate that many different proposals are being made by people because there is such anxiety to have an immediate response to the large-scale mental health problems that are emerging now, as we can see around us. There is no point in setting up task forces, sub-committees or the like. It should be the main implementation body for our mental health strategy and it has to be put in place at an early stage. I welcome the Minister's commitment and look forward to positive news ne…

I want to make brief reference to the health advice we received late on Monday evening with regard to the Covid-19 committee. It came out of nowhere and I still cannot figure out who took the decision to request it or go to that particular source. It has certainly caused major problems for the operation of the committee, the House and, we now know, the Courts Service, and goodness knows how many other workplaces. It has the potential to cause chaos because its implications are so severe. It is important that today,…

By way of clarification, the Oireachtas did not ask someone to come in on Monday. It was written advice that was given that is completely new advice. Previously a consultant on workplace health and safety was asked to come in and gave the original advice that we have been operating to up to this week. The other was just a particular medical person who was asked. I have four questions. I read in today's edition of The Irish Times that the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, has said that immediate action…

Waiting rooms are at a very basic level.

I thank the Minister for those answers. I also asked him about the mechanism for identifying those groups and responding, and that is an important point. If we look back over the past week, for example, there were about 86 new cases the other night. If that was based on a positive rate of 3% or less, that means that fewer than 3,000 tests were performed. The numbers are getting very low now, so there should be vast capacity. There should not be any reason for not ensuring there is full testing and repeat testing in…

Why are we not doing that now?

These sessions work very well. Many questions are asked and many answers are provided. I hope the Minister will answer all the questions I have for him today. In his opening comments he correctly praised the Irish people for all they have done to flatten the curve and control the virus. The problem lies elsewhere. Unfortunately, the side of the deal which involves having a testing and tracing system in place with a fast turnaround of the tests at the scale required has not been kept. All we can do is keep our finge…

Could we have the guidance on the Tennis Ireland directions by Monday? Can we have them in the next couple of days so people are clear about them?

For clarity, I was not suggesting that the schools should reopen; I was saying that school buildings could be opened to use them for childcare.

People are raising all kinds of different issues. The longer we continue in this health crisis, the deeper we get into an economic crisis as well. Practically every aspect of life has been impacted by the virus and the associated economic recession we are in. I want to take us back to stage 1 in this Government's response to this virus, namely, the strategy we are pursuing in this country to contain the virus. That strategy is about testing, tracing and isolating. Some of us feel like a broken record in commenting …

It is to test; it is not about capacity.

Why were they so narrow when we needed to test?

That is a different issue.

I want to start off with the subject of testing, on which we have never had a satisfactory answer. We have been told we will get to a point, on 18 May, when it is hoped we will be able to test 15,000 people per day and carry out the associated tracing. Last week, the Minister for Health and the Taoiseach were at pains to point out that this is about capacity to test rather than actually doing the tests. Many people would be of the view that 15,000 is the minimum number of tests we should be carrying out per day in …

What about the objective?

I wish to express appreciation for the outstanding work that is being done on the front line, particularly by health workers, and to offer the condolences of the Social Democrats to the many families who have lost loved ones in this pandemic. Since the first case of Covid-19 in this country two months ago, we have been told that the strategy was to establish a robust test and trace regime which could rapidly identify each new case, trace the contacts, isolate them and thereby contain the virus. We needed to do that…

I am raising with the Minister the question of testing and tracing. This is the strategy on which everything else is based. An enormous national effort is being put in based on the premise that the strategy of test and trace would actually operate, but it has not operated at anything like at the scale that is required. We have been told that the target figure for capacity should be 15,000 tests per day, which is 105,000 per week. We are currently testing fewer than 42,000 per week. There is a huge gap to be made up…

The Minister spoke about the behaviour of the virus. Dr. Tony Holohan raised this as well. We can only know about the behaviour of the virus if there is a proper test and tracing system in place. As I said to the Taoiseach earlier today, this is a circular argument. We need to get down the number of people in hospitals and, in particular, intensive care units. We will only succeed in doing that if we can tackle the virus at community level. However, we are failing to do that because of the absence of sufficient tes…

Is it completed?