Confusion over Cork meat plant figures clarified
THE confusion generated over a Dáil statement by Sinn Féin Finance Spokesman, Pearse Doherty, in which he claimed there had been 226 positive cases of COVID 19 in a Cork meat plant during the month of July can now be clarified.
In the Dáil last week, while questioning the Tánaiste Leo Varadkar over the Government’s handling of COVID-19, Deputy Doherty said:
“From a freedom of information response to Hannah Quinn-Mulligan of the Irish Farmers’ Journal, we know there were 226 cases associated with one plant in July.
“We understand that plant is in Cork and that it was never closed down.”
This caused some scratching of heads as there had only been 30 cases reported for County Cork during the month of July. The HPSC figures for July 1 were 1536 Covid cases to date in Cork, this figure was 1566 at the end of the month, July 31.
When contacted by this newspaper, Hannah Quinn Mulligan said the figure of 226 Covid cases quoted by the Sinn Féin TD was, in fact, a cumulative figure including all the cases of COVID in the particular meat plant up to and including July.
There were approximately 12 cases in the Cork meat plant in July.
At the time he made statement in the Dáil, Deputy Doherty was quizzing the Tánaiste about the decision last week to cancel rolling testing in the meat plants as the capacity to carry out testing was required to deal with the mounting number of referrals from GPs working in the community.
In his response to Deputy Doherty, the Tánaiste made absolutely no reference to the figures quoted by the Donegal TD regarding the meat plant in Cork.