Mr. Jim Breslin:

There are definitely phases to this. If the Deputy remembers the mid-term and people arriving home from Italy, that was in a situation where the knowledge of the virus as having been in Italy was current at that stage. Whether we could have foreseen that or not, all this is about judgment calls at a point in time. However, we did not have the subsequent information that subsequently developed.

I remember the recommendation that the Ireland-Italy match should be postponed and not go ahead. There was criticism from all sides about that. It was not just people saying we should have made the decision earlier. Many people said we should not have made the decision at all and should have allowed the match to go ahead.

Regarding Cheltenham, the Deputy should be aware of the extent of the cases in the UK at the time. That is not to say that if we had to make the decision over again, we would make it but at the time of Cheltenham there were 590 cases across the whole UK. When we recommended that the rugby match with Italy be postponed, there were 15,000 cases initially, mostly in northern Italy, where a lot of the rugby supporters came from. Also at the time, we recommended that the St Patrick's Day parade be cancelled. Again, we are taking decisions as we were going along.