Mr. Willie Walsh:

I thank the Deputy and agree with him. Employment support has been critical and I acknowledge that if not for the employment support provided by governments, not just in Ireland but in other countries, the scale of unemployment in the airline industry would be massive. We were hoping to keep people in employment and with critical skills in place to enable the industry to restart quickly. As this period of restriction has extended well beyond what anybody expected, and the damage done to the industry is significantly greater than anybody expected, the ability of the industry to recover to the 2019 levels of capacity quickly has reduced to the point where that is impossible. It will take several years.

We have seen many aircraft retired so they are not available. Unfortunately, many critical staff have been made redundant and many more would have been made redundant if not for the employment support schemes. We must very thankful and recognise the supports that governments have provided. That enables airlines to get moving again, although not at the same scale I would have hoped for if we had this conversation six months ago. I remain optimistic we will be able to see a recovery in the second half of this year, and this is principally based on the accelerated roll-out of the vaccine and the scientific evidence that the vaccine is having a significant impact on the levels of transmission. Those levels of transmission are definitely dampening as a result of vaccination.

On the question of serial antigen testing, I listened with great interest to Professor Mark Ferguson when he appeared before the committee. I am not sure I support the view that people need to be tested every day but a risk-based approach to testing is a very sensible suggestion. I read the recommendation of the committee on that and it would be great to see the Government act on that recommendation.

I do not have as much data about Ireland because they are not readily available but the UK is providing much data in this regard. My latest data relate to the period between 25 March and 5 May, when just over 150,000 people travelled to the UK and either had to go into hotel quarantine, similar to Ireland, or self-isolate. Of those 150,000 people, all of whom were required to do a PCR test on or before their second day from arrival in the UK, 3,749 demonstrated a positive indication. That is 2.5%. Interestingly, if we remove people who travelled from India and Pakistan, who accounted for 20% of the people travelling and over 50% of the people who tested positive, the positivity rate was 1.5%. To put this in a more positive way, 98.5% of people were perfectly fine, had no virus and were not contagious but suffered restrictions as a result of this process. The figures I have for Ireland comprise a much smaller sample and I am not sure they are up to date. The figures indicated approximately 3% of people who had gone into hotel quarantine subsequently tested positive, meaning 97% of people who were forced to pay over €1,800 for the pleasure of being locked in a hotel for two weeks were fine.

If we assess these measures, we must consider the risk. We cannot have a zero-risk approach because it is unachievable. If people accept a reasonable level of risk, it can be done without the measures that have been put in place. The quality of testing has significantly improved. I do not know how many PCR tests members have done but I have done ten in the past two months associated with the travel I have been doing. I have also done several antigen tests and, fortunately, I have tested negative every time. Nobody wants to have to go through that just for the privilege of exercising their freedom of movement, which is a fundamental principle of the EU. That is really what has upset me most.

I agree with the Deputy's assessment and the committee's recommendation on replacing forced quarantine with a sensible system of serial testing, including on a daily basis. I am sure people would not mind that as an alternative to hotel quarantine. It could happen every second day. It would be a very sensible risk-based approach to the problem we face.