Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Back in March, the message from the World Health Organization to all countries was to test, test and test. The Government has moved mountains to follow this advice to the letter. In the last week alone, 68,000 people have been tested. That is the equivalent of the population of Sligo now being tested every single week. That is what is needed to hunt down the virus, to keep it out of our nursing homes and to keep it away from our vulnerable people. Countless lives have been saved by swift and determined action by this Government but as we have seen over the past two weeks, numbers have steadily increased, predominantly in the Dublin area. This increase has led to a high-risk delay in getting a test.

As I know this is of great concern to the Government, I would like to take this time to highlight a specific case that came to my attention today. One of my constituents in Lucan was confirmed as a close contact of a colleague who received a positive Covid-19 test on Sunday. Many of his colleagues were also deemed close contacts. They were contacted on Monday by the contact tracing team, which confirmed they were being referred for a Covid-19 test and should receive appointments within 24 hours. When my constituent did not receive his appointment on Monday, he called the HSE live helpline that day. He was advised he should receive the appointment by Tuesday. He was added to an escalation list and was informed he would definitely receive an appointment by 8 p.m. that evening. No text, phone call or appointment came through. He phoned the HSE helpline again this morning and was advised that no referral was to be found on the system and he would have to be added again, thus starting the process all over from the beginning. It has now been three days since he was first notified that he was a close contact and was being referred for a test. His colleague, who was tested in Tullamore, has already received his result but my constituent has not yet received his appointment.

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Both were identified as close contacts at the same time. Another person, also based in Lucan, has not yet received his appointment either. By the time that my two constituents receive their results, a week will have lapsed since they were identified as close contacts. If they are diagnosed as positive cases, so much time will have been lost in tracing their contacts from last weekend. Since then, as we all know, the figures in Dublin have given us great cause for concern, and the situation here has been described as being on a knife-edge.

That is why it is critical that people in Lucan get tested as quickly as people in Tullamore. It is not fair, it is not right and it is not safe that when two people are referred at the same time, the person in Tullamore receives his or her result before the person in Lucan even receives his or her appointment. Delays such as this will have a domino effect in allowing Covid-19 to spread across the capital city. We need to get testing and tracing back under control. We have seen the system being challenged before and we saw a concerted Government response to get it back under control, and that is what we need to see again.

Specifically, I ask the Minister to commit to providing mobile testing units in Lucan and Clondalkin as the first step to achieving this outcome. We did it before, it worked and so let us do it again. The virus is so contagious that it is a major challenge to meet our targets when our infection rate rises. We have, however, met that challenge before and we need that same level of determined focus to meet that challenge again.

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