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

Most people in this room accept and have worked individually and collectively from the point of view that there is a requirement for a framework. Everyone accepts that. We have all asked individual and collective questions on when we can get antigen testing in operation if that is up to specification so we do not take away from community testing. Most people are in that scenario. We accept how difficult it has been for the aviation sector and the absolute necessity to ensure we have an aviation sector when we get beyond this.

When we talk about the likes of Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Ireland at the minute, we are dealing with places that are either introducing new restrictions or have already done so on the basis that we have a huge amount of community transmission. That will obviously impact flying now. I accept we need the framework up and running. The European Commission and the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA, appeared before the committee yesterday. There is talk, obviously, of these European Union Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, and ECDC protocols which will be in operation and that would relate to testing. There is no surety, however, that we have any level of agreement across Europe that we will have anything close to harmonisation. That is before we talk about the difficulties here as regards Brexit and the fact we obviously must get an all-Ireland response but there also needs to be some element of a deal or harmonisation with the British Government, which is very difficult at the minute. We all accept the Irish Government needs to move as soon as possible. That is accepted.

When we talk about Aer Lingus and Ryanair we are dealing with two major airlines which have already spoken from the point of view of seeking to have this framework up and running. They are not necessarily looking for State money at this point. They are talking about rebates with regard to the future. We hope that when we talk about travel next summer, we are also talking about a period when we will probably have the outworking of a vaccine. None of this, however, is absolutely sure.

I want to put this question to Mr. Wilson. We also had travel agents before the committee, particularly travel agents who have block booked and who stated they were having incredible difficulty in getting moneys back from Ryanair. There is all this talk about dealing directly with customers but in some cases these were block bookings for school groups and such. Could we get that sort of problem resolved? I have a further question after that.