Mr. John Mulhern:

We hope that our diaspora will be able to get home for Christmas. Like the other airports, we have rural populations and many people have spent a very long time living alone in rural Ireland who would like nothing better than to be reunited with their families this Christmas. We have three routes for our diaspora to return to the county - one through Luton, one through Stansted and probably the major one is through Dublin on the PSO, interlining with flights from all over the world. I believe that the measures in place in level 5 will bring about a fall that is significant enough for Covid numbers to fall to safe levels here, and that similar will happen with the UK. It made a similar decision and there is a similar level of lockdown there. That may well bring its numbers down to a level that brings them close to or within the green zone we all hope for.

We have been in discussions, which I believe will be fruitful in the next week or so, to allow people to avail of PCR testing if they come from orange, red or grey zones or regions. The private company we are dealing with, if everything works to plan, will supply a PCR test which will be 50% or 60% cheaper than the tests some of the other companies are supplying now. It is possible if one does it in volume-----