Mr. Jim Breslin:

I thank the Deputy. The best means we have for generating activity within the country is to keep the virus low. That would allow us all to circulate, including to go to beautiful parts of the country on the west coast. I hope that will be something we will be able to do as the phases continue.

On overseas travel into the country, there are difficulties with a testing regime. The tests only identify the virus at particular points in the cycle. One could have undetected Covid-19 for somebody in the early days after having contacted another individual with Covid-19. It just would not be in their respiratory tract. The test result would be "Not detected" but they would hear that as, "I do not have Covid." There is quite a period where people are asymptomatic. When they subsequently developed symptoms, they might dismiss them because they had been tested. Countries have looked at it but there are issues around it in the message it sends out. The most important thing is that people are aware of their own symptoms and respond quickly to them. It is also important that we would not have people coming from areas where community transmission is higher than it is in our own country.

That is hard to achieve because the knowledge we have of different countries is predicated on them having a testing regime that is similar to our own, and not every country has that. The EU has talked about corridors and different relationships between countries. That, again, would all be in subsequent phases. I do not think anything we are talking about will be immediate but they are potentially matters being worked out at European level for further phases in the reopening process.