Mr. Paul Hackett:

Deputy O'Connor is correct. The Schengen proposal that was announced on Monday is the way for us to open up to the UK and the US, which is vital. Whenever we speak, even though the ITAA is involved in outbound activity, we would always be focused as well on our inbound counterparts and the domestic travel industry, which is hugely important in this country.

As the Deputy quite rightly said, 75% of the income for the hotel and hospitality business in Ireland comes from the international market. One cannot have outbound without inbound. The ITAA and ITIC work in hand in glove. We support the airlines because the airlines and the airports need traffic both ways. No route is going to be a single directional route and traffic must go both ways in order for it to be viable so our connectivity is critically important. It was great to hear An Taoiseach the other day recognise that we are a global connected island. We have got to get back to that.

As the Deputy quite rightly said, international travel has been very unfairly demonised when other things are still sorely missing such as the community transmission numbers, and test and trace stack up to that. A lot of the time international travel has been a very convenient distraction and that is where the demonisation has come from. We have proposals on the table for the digital green certificate, and the Schengen area for the UK and the US. Our proposals need to be acted on.