Dr. Tony Holohan:

We have not advised that. The context in which any of these things ever arises is what the ambient risk is in terms of transmission. If that were to arise right now, right across Europe, including the UK and North America, and North America is not part of the EU arrangements, the vast majority of countries are red and getting redder. That is the current situation. That is the reason we are concerned about international travel. While there are various measures that can be put in place at points in time that enable us to ensure that, inasmuch as possible, we can make every form of activity, including travel, as safe as possible and allow us resume these activities inasmuch as we can, we can only do that by reference to the ambient risks of community transmission. The whole of Europe is experiencing a very significant resurgence of the disease. This country, and I will not start concluding on this at this point because we are only two weeks into the set of measures in terms of level 5, has seen a significant reduction in its seven-day and now 14-day incidence consequent on the measures that are in place here. The experience we have had in this country, in particular looking at seven-day incidence, and looking at it towards the end of last week and comparing our experience to those of Europe is that the level of disease transmission here is improving at a point when the vast majority of countries in Europe are disimproving. We simply have to take that into account in terms of our public health advice to people who are making plans around travel because many European countries, unfortunately for them, are in a situation where they are facing much higher levels of disease, and deteriorating levels of disease, where, at least in the two weeks so far, we have been experiencing a level of improvement that very few other countries are able to report. We need to hold on to that.