Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Bassato and Mr. Berlenghi for attending the meeting. Their engagement with us has been very informative. There is significant frustration for the committee in regard to the process around the introduction of the digital green certificate, the use of antigen testing and the urgency of that situation. We are looking at 26 June as the date when the certificate will come into operation in Europe. Mr. Bassato has outlined to us today how a fellow European country is operating transatlantic flights safely through the use of antigen testing, with only 0.12% of 12,000 passengers testing positive. He has told us that Italy is accepting non-essential travellers, who have to isolate for five days and then take an antigen or PCR test. Moreover, in a week's time, Italy will be fully open for tourists from EU and Schengen countries, who, so long as they have a negative PCR or antigen test 48 hours prior to their arrival, will not be required to take a test during their stay.

Our situation is that we are still applying a hotel quarantine regime, even though our Covid infection numbers are declining. We need to move on from that. We have already asked the Government to look at setting up a pilot antigen testing system for air travel. The regime that is put in place for antigen testing must reflect the fact we are seeing a major improvement in the reduction in Covid cases. That needs to be reflected in the system we have in place for tourists and businesspeople coming into and out of Ireland. It is also vital that the DGC regime is rolled out on 26 June and not any later.

I thank the witnesses again for attending the meeting. We will continue our engagement with them and we wish them well. We will suspend briefly to prepare for the next witnesses.