Public confidence in the Taoiseach's ability to manage the Covid-19 crisis has collapsed in recent months. Today, the Taoiseach promised clarity but instead we have had further confusion. Dublin is left in limbo, our citizens over the age of 70 are left without necessary guidance, and travel advice is confused and unsure again. Most striking is the absence of any comprehensive plan to step up testing and tracing capacity. The Taoiseach and I both know that some people are waiting for results of their tests in some cases for six or seven days. It is this inefficiency that allows the virus to take hold and to transmit across our communities.

The Taoiseach has again today made an appeal to individual citizens to shoulder their responsibilities, which is fair enough. The fact is, however, that the Taoiseach is failing in his. The Government can publish any plans it wants but they are not worth the paper they are written on so long as our testing and tracing capacities are so woefully inadequate. The Taoiseach has to get this right. A first-class testing and tracing system is the springboard for everything we want to see. It is the sure mechanism to allow people to return to work and stay at work safely and to allow children and students return to education and stay there safely. It is also essential to ensure our health system does not become overwhelmed at a time when trolley figures are creeping back up and waiting lists of outpatient appointments are at record levels. The truth is that the Taoiseach and his predecessor, Deputy Varadkar, have failed to put in place the testing and tracing system we need, which is the carrying out of at least 100,000 tests a week with a guaranteed result within 24 hours. We hear stories of people constantly waiting longer than that.

Let it be said that the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, have had numerous opportunities to put in place this testing and tracing system. In April, the Taoiseach's now Cabinet colleagues, the Ministers, Deputies Varadkar and Harris, said they would be doing 100,000 tests a day by mid-May. We are now in September and that target has not been reached. Back in May the then Taoiseach dismissed my call for these 100,000 tests a week, and he did so in a very arrogant and condescending manner. The occasion of the publication of the reopening roadmap was another chance to get testing and tracing right, but this did not happen. The Taoiseach formed his Government at the end of June and again it was a prime opportunity to get things right and to put an emphasis on testing and tracing. The Taoiseach failed again.

Infection rates dropped over the course of the summer and the Government was again presented with an opportunity to get this right but it did not do so and now the virus has caught up with us. The people in Kildare, Laois and Offaly have already paid a very heavy price for the Government's failure and now the people of Dublin face further restrictions and more disruption to their lives. The growing rates of infection and this disruption are directly related to the Government's failure to get things right.

Amid all the bluster and the very long press conference the Taoiseach hosted earlier today, there is on inescapable truth; either we get testing and tracing right and do it quickly or we will be consigned to a yo-yo effect of further restrictions and even lockdowns. I have no doubt that citizens will carry the burden of their responsibilities but the Government must also measure up to its responsibilities.

The Government published a very comprehensive plan today for living with Covid-19 for the next six months. The plan has three key principles, namely, to protect the lives and health of our people and to limit the damage that Covid-19 can do to peoples' health long-term; to protect employment and economic resilience as best we can and to keep jobs in our economy and enterprises viable; and to improve the quality of life through the restoration of public services. We want to do what we did with the schools, a confidence-boosting measure which the Deputy failed to acknowledge.

That is incorrect-----

To bring 1 million people back into our schools, children and teachers, was a very significant thing to do in the middle of a global pandemic-----

It has been acknowledged several times by the Opposition-----

With respect, I did not interrupt.

We did acknowledge it-----

Come on, stop interrupting.

-----on the floor of the Dáil and at committee. We have acknowledged it.

Deputy, this is Leaders' Questions-----

It is unprecedented for people to be intervening but perhaps it is the Sinn Féin way. It is unparliamentary.

I regret the fact the Deputy has decided to take a very partisan political approach to this issue today.

In terms of public services, I have already referenced education. The plan is also about the unprecedented challenges facing our health services over the coming winter. An additional €600 million has been allocated for innovative measures to deal with capacity issues right through the six months. That is additional money on top of what is there to the end of this year.

In terms of testing and tracing, I note the contrast in the Deputy's language today around testing and tracing and the performance of the HSE with her approach when I facilitated a briefing with the HSE about two weeks ago. There was none of this talk then about "woeful" performance. More than 1 million tests have been carried out in this country since the beginning of the pandemic. Ireland is right up there with other European countries in terms of its testing capacity. It is not good enough for the Deputy to attack people as being "woeful" and to try to belittle the very strong measures that have been taken on testing. Of course we all want it to increase and ramp up but the system can carry out 15,000 tests per day now. It has been at that level for some time now and is under a lot of pressure in terms of community needs and requirements. Deputy McDonald ignored the serial testing programme in nursing homes that was undertaken. It was very comprehensive and has been conducted twice now. It yielded very low positivity rates, thanks be to God, but has kept pressure on the virus in those locations and elsewhere as well.

The plan published today is comprehensive and deals with a whole range of areas. Fundamentally it is about keeping people safe, protecting as many jobs as possible and restoring public services. In terms of quality of life issues, it is about helping and assisting sports and the arts in particular to provide performances, notwithstanding the limitations of Covid-19 itself.

It seems to me that the Taoiseach is making it up as he goes along. If the Government was serious about protecting public health, employment and people's quality of life, it would measure up to a commitment made months ago that 100,000 tests would be carried out per week and that people would be in receipt of their results within 24 hours.

I have the Covid app on my phone. It might interest the Taoiseach to know that over the past seven days, fewer than 75,000 tests were carried out. This is months on from a commitment to hit the target of 100,000 tests. To keep people safe, to keep the economy on track, to ensure that we have some quality of life, including social opportunities, it is my view that we need more than 100,000 tests per week, but the Government has not yet even reached that target.

The truth is that when trouble flared in the midlands because of meat processing plants, and when numbers started to climb, by the Taoiseach's own admission and by his own Minister's admission, they did not have the testing and tracing capacity to catch up and there was a huge time lag. It is very telling that, in today's plan that the Taoiseach has issued, of 59 pages, just one of them addresses the issue of testing and tracing - the most central part of the plan and the Taoiseach has failed. I have to say to him that people in Dublin in particular today, but also throughout the State, are frustrated with the Taoiseach's inability to see the most basic thing, which is to get testing and tracing right and then allow us the opportunity for all else to follow.

The Deputy is shamelessly playing politics with this and she knows it. I agree 100% in regard to testing and tracing and the centrality of it. It is in the plan and the Deputy knows it is in the plan in terms of ramping up testing capacity and contact tracing capacity, and extra numbers being employed. That is the reality. She talks about the midlands. The Government action on the midlands was quick and it was tough, but it yielded results in terms of stabilising the numbers in the midlands and getting the numbers down in Laois, Offaly and Kildare at the time. That will continue. We will continue to improve and to strengthen our testing and tracing responses, and it is a central part of the plan that we have outlined today.

Critically, we also have to be straight with people in terms of the need for all of us to take personal responsibility and adhere to the public health guidance. We have accepted NPHET’s advice in regard to Dublin today and the Government has acted on that, and NPHET will meet again next week in that respect. Our fundamental objective will always be to protect lives and the protection of harm to people as a result of Covid-19, and then maintaining the essential public services we need, that our children and young people need in going to college and to education, and putting in all the resources we can to withstand what will be a lot of significant pressures in the winter time on our health service as a result of Covid-19. Both of those are very important, as well as other aspects of the economy and jobs.