Dr. David Nabarro:

I did see a report in The Irish Timesyesterday explaining what this was about and I note there is a letter that has been signed by 1,000 scientists. I want to be fairly precise on this one. Yes, ideally nations will try to completely suppress the virus but the reality is there is a lot of virus in the world and nations have to be able to connect with others for business as well as for tourism as well as for family connections. It is just not going to be possible to completely insulate Ireland, even if we look at the whole island of Ireland, South and North, without really putting huge constraints on the movement of people and, therefore, on the economy. My point of view is that a responsible way to go about this is to do everything possible to get as low a level of infection as is achievable, in particular by making sure that throughout the country at local level there is the capacity to detect people very quickly if they have Covid and then to isolate them, find their contacts and isolate them, and, particularly if an outbreak does build up and there is a cluster, to bring in people and in a sympathetic and dignified way suppress that cluster and make sure infection control is put in place. This will be the pattern of every country in future. To go for complete eradication is certainly desirable but it is really also possibly not feasible in the current circumstances, especially as the island of Ireland consists of one whole nation and part of another nation. There are all sorts of factors that will restrict the degree to which we can create a hard border-----