Almost €700m spent on PCR testing during pandemic

Tester Samantha Jakstonyte with Cork Airport managing director Niall MacCarthy at a RocDoc drive-thru Covid-19 testing centre at Cork Airport. Picture: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision

The State has spent almost €700m on PCR testing during the Covid-19 pandemic, amid claims of taxpayer’s money being misspent.

It has emerged that, to date, €630m has been spent on the provision of PCR testing throughout the country, and an additional €55m being spent on community testing.

Figures released to Independent TD Michael McNamara show that the overall spend on PCR testing includes a €430m contribution to the National Virus Reference Laboratory.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Mr McNamara questioned why the taxpayer continuing to fund a model of testing which is out of sync with the rest of Europe.

“This extraordinary figure, which is only up to November 2020, is still increasing ... There were 8m tests up to that point, and 2.6m tests since," he said. 

The question is when, not if, PCR testing costs will exceed €1bn. And for what?”

“No other country that I know of is spending anything like this per capita on testing — money that is so badly needed to develop long-term healthcare infrastructure. Why was an expert report recommending antigen tests ignored? 

"Did anybody have the taxpayers' back throughout this period of government?” 

The figures released show that the number of staff in community testing as per the last census is 1,128 in post.

This includes swabbers, support staff, administration staff, and test centre co-ordinators. The test swabbing centre costs to the end of November 2021 were €55.197m. These centres are operated by its community healthcare organisations, the HSE said.

In a reply to Mr McNamara, the HSE said that the overall expenditure on clinical diagnostic testing totalled €630m.

According to the answer given to Mr McNamara, commercial laboratories were paid €79,876,288, while the National Virus Reference Laboratory was paid €453.3m.

The HSE has said that due to the requirement for an urgent response, it acquired access to ‘offshore’ testing in early 2020 at a time when Europe was experiencing substantial clinical diagnostic shortages, and access to SARS-CoV-2 testing was severely limited at a global level.

The HSE has retained access to this offshore facility to ensure that surge capacity could be obtained if required. This surge capacity has been utilised at various surge points over the past 20 months.

It is important to note that laboratory capacity and laboratory supplies were in global short supply between early-mid 2020 as the manufacturers responded to high levels of demand,” the HSE said.

The HSE said the role of commercial providers in supporting the Covid-19 response programme has been crucial at times of significant surge, such as that seen most recently as a result of the Omicron variant.

“While the details of the various contracts are commercially confidential to the individual providers, we can confirm that we currently have contracts in place with Eurofins-Biomnis for the provision of Covid testing services,” the HSE said. 

"This includes access to capacity overseas to support surge demands as needed. This now provides capacity for up to 100,000 tests per week."