Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Friday, 24 July 2020

Special Committee on Covid-19 Response

Covid-19: Impact on Public Transport (Resumed)

Mr. Kenneth Spratt:

That is really important. We can touch again on the measures that are in place and the ones that we have planned.

There was a lot of social media commentary last week about Dallas in the USA. We had four flights in from Dallas last week. There was an average of 24 people on each flight. I do not have the exact figures but I think it is safe enough to suggest that probably half of them were probably Irish people returning home. While there was quite a lot of hysteria and social media commentary we had a total of 96 people coming in from Dallas last week. We are acutely aware of the need to ensure that we do as much as we possibly can in order to stave off importation of the virus, allowing for the fact that some people do have to travel for essential work reasons, essential caring reasons, or because they are Irish citizens wanting to return home or Irish people wanting to come home to Ireland for important family events. Mr. Towey and I touched on the measures earlier on. Suffice it to say that as a result of the Government decision earlier in the week around the green list, we have been given our riding instructions in terms of additional measures that could be introduced around departure testing, entry testing, entry screening, random testing and the other things we have mentioned already. I do not know if there is anything Mr. Towey wants to add.

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