Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On antigen testing for international travel, we all know there are different views. NPHET and the Chief Medical Officer do not like it, while the chief scientific officer, Professor Ferguson, is a big fan. The Government is not ruling it out but for now, we have PCR testing for international travel. We are not ruling out a move to antigen testing but, without rehearsing the arguments, there are advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is that antigen tests are cheaper and quicker and will pick up people who are in their infectious stage of the virus where they are shedding virus and are transmissible. On the downside, they miss a lot of positives and negatives and can give false reassurance. Given that we are making so much progress with the vaccines, I hope we might not need tests at all. Perhaps we will get to the point where we can say that being fully vaccinated is enough and not require people to have any form of test. That is where I would like to be but we have to figure that out between now and next week when the Government agrees its proposals on international travel.

On the wider strategic point, in fairness, the agencies and Department are doing as the Deputy described, even though we have been extremely busy firefighting and dealing with the pandemic over the last year. Since we have not been engaging in many of the normal activities, such as trade missions and travelling around the country attending major events, we have had a bit of time to do some more strategic thinking. The remote working strategy was a reflection of that. An artificial intelligence strategy will come out quite soon. IDA Ireland also has a new strategy. Like everyone, the Department and its family of agencies have used the downtime created by the pandemic to do some forward thinking and insurance is part of that.