Mr. Paddy Kavanagh:

Our members have suffered from redundancies and lay-offs. It is worse in some airports and employments than in others. We also have many members in component production in the aerospace industry in a few plants in Ireland. We have lost skilled people who will not be easy to replace.

We need an holistic approach in which rapid testing has a part to play. For example, in June, one of my sons returned home after five years in Australia. Another son came home two or three weeks ago for a wedding and only went back at the weekend. Neither of them was contacted at any stage about isolation or anything like that. Surely the success rate in rapid testing at approximately 60% is better than the low percentage of follow-up for what we have now.

My biggest concern is the knock-on effect not only on the industry and employers, but also on the communities. As I said earlier, many ancillary services depend on people who work in these areas, which provide good employment. That is having a severe knock-on effect in Dublin, Limerick, Clare, Cork etc. We need to work on a remedy to cure all these ills we have.