Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the ambassadors and I thank them for the solidarity they have shown the people of Ireland on the ongoing Brexit negotiations. I will make two points. The first is related to the agreement yesterday by the Council to a traffic light system to co-ordinate travel restrictions across Europe, putting in place a common mapping system to define areas at different levels of risk. Is there broad support for this in Portugal and Germany? Do the ambassadors think we are a little behind when it comes to Covid-19 pre-flight testing? Is it something the Presidency may be thinking of rolling out? We need to get our countries up and running again economically and we are going to be living with Covid for some time. Should pre-flight testing be part of our agenda in Europe going forward?

My next point is in regard to the future of Europe, putting the citizen at the centre of that and building alliances.

Our guest witnesses' countries have very ambitious Presidency programmes. How ambitious are their countries in respect of putting their citizens first? At present, in Ireland we offer free travel to our citizens over the age of 65. I note that this is also done in Belgium and Hungary. Would it not be wonderful if we could build alliances to offer free travel or discounted travel to all of our elderly citizens within our European states? Many people today when going abroad when over the age of 70 cannot even hire a car in some of these European countries because of their age. Perhaps that might be an ambitious programme for our guests to take back as part of their Presidency of the European Council in the future. That would be one way to put the citizens first. Those are the two points I wished to make to our guest and I thank them for coming in.