Ms Mary Considine:

The clear adoption of the traffic light system is really important. We need to remove restrictions and replace them with testing. There have been significant discussions in the committee today. There is a unanimous call that there should not be restrictions for green listed as well as amber and orange listed countries and that there be pre-departure testing for passengers coming in. We would also need to reciprocate that from an Irish perspective. That is why the airports have done a lot of work to ensure they would be able to put testing in place. We also need an acceptance of the type of testing.

My understanding is that there is no acceptance of anything other than PCR testing, which obviously is the most expensive and takes the longest to deliver. There are certain things that the Irish Government could do today to improve this. For example, it could have clear communications, remove the ambiguity and try to restore some level of consumer confidence while we are living with this pandemic.