Six months ago I raised the issue of antigen testing in a constructive way. I have one such test to hand. I will take it when I go home to protect my family, particularly my parents who are elderly and live close to me. It costs €5 and as I said I raised this six months ago. The European Commission has approved their use and they are being used increasingly internationally. The HSE even uses the results of these tests in its counters for those who are infected. Liverpool City Council has tested 500,000 people and has had very good results, showing a rate of 84% to 91%, which is shown to be accurate. The UK has bought tens of thousands of these tests. Surely therefore, we should be using antigen testing as part of a mix of ways for managing the virus going forward. Many people have called for this. The technologies have improved. As an example, many of the teachers' unions have asked that these be used as part of the solution to opening up the schools in the coming weeks.

Will the Government consider that, please?

I agree with the Deputy on his essential point. Antigen testing has a greater role to play in Ireland's battle against Covid, but it is one of those areas where we are very much led by medical and scientific advice. The Deputy will be aware that HIQA carried out a health technology assessment on this and NPHET has given advice on it quite recently which reaffirms the use of antigen testing in certain scenarios such as symptomatic cases and outbreaks. However, the advice that we currently have very strongly from the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Holohan, and NPHET is that antigen testing has its limitations and that it is not particularly useful in terms of mass screening. It is useful when it comes to symptomatic cases but it misses very high numbers of asymptomatic cases and, therefore, could give people a significant level of false reassurance. It could lead to people being told that they are negative when they are not and therefore spreading the disease rather than stopping it. This is something where we will be very much advised and guided by the doctors and scientists.