Dr. Niamh Power:

We are operating out of Dublin and Cork and do not have any experience of airports abroad. As Mr. Osman said, there is a massive difficulty in terms of moving targets, with some countries, such as the Netherlands, changing position overnight. The big advantage antigen testing gives is that we can quickly adapt to those moving targets. For instance, when the Netherlands introduced the requirement for a test four hours before a flight into the country, we were able to accommodate that. People who had turned up at the airport without a test, the wrong test or an out-of-date test were able to come to us, have their antigen test and be back at check-in 20 minutes later with their certificates. That simply cannot happen with PCR testing, whereas the scalability and flexibility are definitely there with antigen testing.

The difficulty I would worry about is that even though antigen testing is very rapid and adaptable, how will it be integrated in terms of uploading the digital green certificate? The concern is that there will be a delay. Will somebody else have to validate the test or will centres be able to validate and upload directly? The beauty of antigen testing is its speed and adaptability. If a centre is deemed eligible by the HSE or the Department of Health to be part of the digital green certificate system, then we should be able to upload directly. If we have to go through a validation process after the tests, it really takes from the beauty, speed and flexibility of antigen testing.