TAOISEACH Michéal Martin's office has acknowledged that testing for new a new variant of Covid-19 is taking place in Northern Ireland.
The clarification comes after Mr Martin told RTÉ last Saturday that his "understanding" was that no tests are being carried out for the new variant north of the border.
The Department of Health at Stormont released a statement on Sunday saying that "in light of some misleading commentary in recent days", it wanted to detail "the ongoing work in Northern Ireland to identify new variants of the Covid-19".
On Monday First minister Arlene Foster spoke with Mr Martin by phone and later took to Twitter to say: "Just finished a call with Micheál Martin where he accepted that Northern Ireland is testing for SARS-CoV-2.
"The variant testing here is massively more advanced than (in the) Republic of Ireland.
“(I) also pressed him on sharing travel locator forms. He committed to movement soon on that issue.”
A spokesman for the Taoiseach later claimed that the Fianna Fáil leader had meant that figures were not available for the north alone.
The taoiseach's latest intervention comes after an interview in the Irish News this week in which Dr Conall McCaughey, who is based at the regional virus laboratory in Belfast, said he and his team have dramatically scaled up geonome sequencing work on the more infectious 'Kent' variant of Covid-19 in recent weeks.
In a statement last night his office acknowledged that testing is taking place.
"We accept that genomic sequencing for Covid-19 is taking place in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom," a spokeswoman said.
"At the recent meeting between the Taoiseach and the First and Deputy First Ministers it was agreed that discussions would continue between officials on the current Covid-19 situation, including the impact of the new variant."
The spokeswoman said EU countries acknowledge that their approach needs to be improved.
"The Taoiseach has stated all EU Member States accept that their genomic sequencing capability needs to improve, and that the UK’s capability is among the best in the world," she said.
"We acknowledge and welcome the NI Department of Health statement on Sunday that they are actively seeking a breakdown of data specific to NI from the wider UK testing."
