When I spoke to the Taoiseach about his failure to pay student nurses and the use of temporary agency contracts for contract tracers and medical scientists carrying out testing, he baulked when I suggested that the Government is trying to fight Covid on the cheap. I should rephrase it and state that the Government is trying to fight Covid on the basis of cheap labour and utter gross exploitation. The latest example of this is just absolutely scandalous. Some 15 contract tracers employed four weeks ago on these crappy CPL contracts that I exposed a number of weeks ago have not been paid a cent for the past four weeks despite working on the front line in Covid. They have not been paid at all despite being signed off the pandemic unemployment payment, having no income to pay their bills and being absolutely critical to the contact tracing we need to keep ahead of this virus. They have not been paid by CPL

I thank the Deputy.

This, by the way, reflects the experience of another group of similar contact tracers I mentioned a while ago who were on those zero-hour contacts-----

Please, Deputy, the time is up.

-----for whom it took eight weeks before they got paid a cent by CPL. This is an outrage. What is the Taoiseach going to do about it?

Sorry, the HSE deals with this issue. I do not know whether the Deputy has contacted the HSE or not about it but he might give me the details and I will follow it up for him. There are many contract tracers out there now and there has not been an issue to date in terms of people being paid.

There has.

There is no agenda not to pay people. I am sure the Deputy will accept that. Send on the details to me, please, with the 15 names and I will follow it up.