Mr. Paul Kelly:

I think the headline is a little bit inaccurate. My statement, importantly, is that we should open up overseas tourism as fast as public health considerations allow. First and foremost, we all understand that public health comes first and it is not in the interests of any sector in Ireland for there to be any kind of resurgence of the virus. That is a really important distinction. We are saying that as fast as public considerations can allow, we need to find a way to a safe reopening. I know there are meetings ongoing on this issue at various levels. It comes back to the point that 70% of tourism revenue comes from overseas visitors and 180,000 of the jobs throughout the country that are provided by tourism are provided by the money overseas visitors bring in. If there is an opportunity for safe access to be opened up, we should look at it. If there are source markets where there are people who want to come to Ireland and where it is safe to have them come here, we need to find a way of facilitating that as quickly as we can. We also must bear in mind that this is not something one can just say today that we will do and it will happen tomorrow. Airlines have to do their scheduling and people have to be able to plan.

Whereas people plan domestic trips at a couple of weeks' notice, they tend to plan foreign trips at a couple of months notice. There is a need for us to communicate some form of roadmap to the airline industry, to overseas visitors and so on that is in line with public health considerations.