We will have to live with Covid until a vaccine is found. That is self-evident. One significant ingredient in dealing with that is maintaining public goodwill. To do that, the message and information have to be coherent and understood, and the measures that are taken have to be seen to be fair and proportionate. Another component is that when something is a failure, we need to name it as a failure and deal with it as a failure. As a representative from Kildare, I know there is a substantial sense of relief that lockdown has been lifted, but it has had significant consequences. Businesses have closed and jobs have been lost for good. The lockdown in Kildare, Laois and Offaly followed a number of large outbreaks originating in meat processing plants that subsequently spread to people's homes. There is a sense that State agencies dropped the ball and that high-risk places of employment were not being monitored, and there is a price to pay for both the economy and society.

That full county lockdowns remain part of the regime means that we must learn lessons from what has happened here. Many of those who work in meat plants are low paid and often are migrant workers working in poor conditions. Workers are paid on a piece-time basis, which necessitates very high levels of productivity, which did not reduce. It is inconsistent with social distancing. The all-important thing is the bottom line and that productivity is maintained. Slaughterhouses especially are cold and wet environments and are conducive anyway to regular colds and flu. They are noisy places that require people to shout to communicate. Many of those who work in the industry are not organised. Very often the employer organises the work permit and is also the landlord. It is not an equal relationship and this is fundamental to the problem, as is our cheap food policy which also has consequences for farmers and consequences with exploitation. Covid-19 has demonstrated just how interconnected we are.

The absence of a test centre, whereby people had to travel on public transport, was another failure. The length of time it took for some of the tests to come back initially was a failure. All of those things cannot be repeated. We have to get absolute assurances that they cannot be repeated.

There is a second lesson with regard to public goodwill, which is the availability of usable data. The rationale for full county lockdowns is still being questioned within those counties. The data hub was updated on 12 August. I understand it will be further updated on 12 September. It showed a wide variation in cases in different parts of the locked down counties. It has to be updated weekly. People will judge for themselves. They do not want to be treated in a paternalistic way that says "we know best and we know where things are". People want to be able to see the evidence to support some of the measures. If it does this the Government brings public goodwill with it.

I have three questions. Will the Taoiseach agree to the establishment of a task force to examine the meat industry? Will the Taoiseach arrange for a weekly update of the usable data in the data hub where people can look at the data themselves? Will the Taoiseach visit the areas that were locked down? There are very real learnings to be had from listening to people who have had that second lockdown, which was way different from the first lockdown.

I thank Deputy Murphy for the series of questions raising very real concerns and issues relating to people from the Deputy's county, the impact of the lockdowns and the whole situation around high-risk areas such as meat plants, which to a large extent represented the perfect storm in the spread of the virus, and related issues.

Again, the decision to intervene in the three counties by bringing in severe restrictions was necessitated by advice from the public health doctors. I was in regular and almost daily contact with the acting Chief Medical Officer when numbers were going up during the summer. NPHET felt that utilising this method and this tool, restricted to three counties, could yield results as a short, sharp mechanism to bring down the numbers. This has worked. The public health people are adamant that this has worked. Those who model these numbers are adamant that the measure has worked. It did, however, have a price. We know at first hand that the people who took a lot on board, including hoteliers and many people involved in providing employment, endured a lot. Lessons can be learned from it. I do not like the idea of closing down an entire county. Most politicians and most of those in government would avoid it. It is easier to avoid having to do these things and having to make these decisions rather than doing them. The lessons are important and will form part of the plan I spoke of earlier. Testing and tracing are essential in enabling us to live with the virus. The Deputy was briefed yesterday.

We arranged a briefing for Opposition leaders with the acting CMO and others. Serial testing is now under way in the three counties in respect of meat plants. The positivity rate is at about 0.5% but of course the virus can spread at any time. We could finish that serial testing programme and the following week a person could go in to work with Covid-19 and spread it. We need constant pressure on the virus through the testing and tracing mechanisms. That, to me, is key.

We also have to look at the entire meat processing industry from end to end. I refer not just to the workplace itself but to the accommodation, its nature and quality as well as transport to and from work. These cannot be seen as three separate pieces but as a continuum. While the rate might be 0.5% in the serial testing programme, somewhere else along that continuum, either in terms of transport arrangements or housing, the virus could be developing again and could come into the factory, where it can spread very quickly because of the conditions that pertain in meat factories.

Thank you Taoiseach.

I am very clear that we must have this engagement with the meat industry and with other sectors that are important and which create employment. The rights of workers in the meat industry need strengthening and I believe collective representation for those workers is important. That will form part of the Government's continuing engagement with the industry.

Does that mean the Taoiseach will set up a task force? Will he provide the data people want? It generates goodwill if people can see the situation for themselves. We are talking here about adults who have doubts but who are being told "It's grand; we have it; it'll work; we know best". That does not wash; people want to see the information. The information is there in the data hub and it was clear when it was published on 12 August that there were wide variations in the number of cases. I am not saying there were not cases but there were wide variations. I live a mile from the Dublin county boundary but 50 kilometres away from Kildare Chilling. It did not make sense to me that I could go to Kildare town, where there was a very large outbreak and circulate with no problem. I could then go to work in Dublin the following day. That is the kind of thing that led to people arguing the county lockdown did not make sense. People did not understand how that was a coherent piece of advice from a public health perspective. People need information so they can make up their minds themselves and I ask that it be provided.

I ask the Taoiseach to respond on the taskforce and the weekly updating of the data hub. Will he visit those areas? We have to learn from this. If this is part of the regime, the Taoiseach has to hear about it because the second lockdown was very different from the first time round.

Of course I will visit the areas. I did not want to do so during the period of the severe restrictions but we were in touch with the chambers of commerce. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, the Tánaiste and others were in touch with affected people in the three counties and we will continue to engage with them.

On the data hub, the Deputy heard yesterday from the acting CMO that the next uploading of data will be in September. I have asked for greater provision of data. NPHET was very clear that it should be countywide. We asked the same questions that Deputy Murphy has asked, including whether we could lock down selected parts of a county. The team was very clear that the cases were countywide and that we needed to introduce a countywide lockdown. Of course there are inconsistencies with quite a number of the restrictions. I did not like the restrictions related to sport, particularly when I heard the news that the 200 spectators were gone. I did not jump for joy when I heard that; quite the opposite actually and I would love that to change. What the measures were about, if one thinks about it, is that we wanted people to continue working as best they could within the economy. The restrictions in Kildare, Laois and Offaly were not the same as the lockdown that happened nationally earlier. They were more nuanced but by virtue of that fact, they were perhaps more difficult to communicate.

Although, I will say this much: adherence to public guidelines is up over the past two months. It is significantly up on the position in May and June, which is interesting. People look at the figures and see the rises and so on like that. That said, I will visit. I agree with the Deputy on the data.

On the task force, I want to see what the best mechanism is for getting to grips with this quickly in terms of this industry and other sectors. Direct provision is another area we have to engage with seriously in terms of helping the residents there and ensuring that they are not in centres where disease spreads regularly.