Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Friday, 24 July 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Covid-19: Impact on Public Transport (Resumed)

Photo of Ruairi Ó MurchúRuairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree. The unfortunate thing is that not everyone is always reasonable. I will finish up on the green list, which came up this week. I accept some of the commentary from the officials on the fact that they would be looking at putting the passenger locator online, which would allow for a greater level of authentication. I assume they are talking about stronger protocols in respect of follow-up. There is the whole question that was brought into play by the Tánaiste about what previously people called quarantine and isolation, which is now referred to as restricted movement. People will need greater detail on what that actually means. Mr. Spratt spoke about the possibilities of certain testing procedures that would be carried out in airports for people incoming and outgoing. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, spoke the other day about possibly random testing of passengers coming from certain places that do not fall under the green list. How far progressed are all those possible procedures and protocols? The biggest question of all is whether we have the capacity to put them into play as quickly as possible? Even last week we saw the difficulty in certain nursing homes where although a couple of weeks ago they were able to get testing turnaround times of four or five hours, suddenly it went out to 48 hours. The important thing at this point is that we test, trace and isolate.

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