Dr. Tony Holohan:

As the Senator rightly says, at the moment we are doing two things. We are doing our best to control transmission through public health measures. At the moment, incidence has been falling over the past couple of weeks in this country. We have seen encouraging moves in that direction, even though we are closely watching the Indian variant, what is happening in the UK and now what is happening in Northern Ireland. More and more people are being vaccinated. Those are the things that will allow us to safely resume airline travel and have people flying again, without the need for us to put in hurdles such as testing, where we do not believe that testing will add anything in their way. We think that when we have a low incidence rate and a high level of vaccination, we can have a safe resumption without the need or recourse to testing.

It might be worth us working through a worked example of the current prevalence rate in this country and I have a note on that.

The Government made the decision about the resumption of airline travel as and from 19 July, and reflecting on all of the different matters to which the Government had to give consideration to, including all of the arrangements that must be now put in train to enable that in terms of certification, which the Senator is familiar with-----