Dr. Tony Holohan:

We accept that. We are on the point of a widespread resumption of that if things stay where they are currently at in Europe and, in a few weeks' time, one could find oneself in a situation where we see a significant range of travel being available to people.

I do not want to be wasting the Deputy's time repeating what I have said about vaccination and all of that, and people have had evidence of recovery from the disease. We do not have a dependence in relation to PCR or antigen testing to enable that, and I am not entirely clear where the Deputy thinks the use of antigen testing in what has happened in recent months would have changed things for travel in this country relative to other countries in Europe. I am not clear on that from the Deputy's question. The position around Europe has been a fairly homogenous one in terms of the risks attending to travel. What is changing that now is Europe is getting into a better position epidemiologically with the disease as a result of the control measures for the most part that are in place and the economic and social restrictions that Europe has had in place.

We have had a range of arrangements in place in this country, of course, which are being eased in an evidenced-based way, as they are across Europe. On the position we found ourselves in, we had, in European terms, the fifth lowest cases in the course of this pandemic in this country and the sixth lowest number of deaths, and we count cases and deaths more comprehensively than any other country. That has been the effect of the measures we have had in place in this country.

Travel has been restricted right across Europe, and not selectively in this country. It is not entirely clear to me from what the Deputy said, if I am picking it up correctly, how, if we had done something differently on antigen testing, in spite of the fact we do not have evidence to support what the Deputy said, it would have changed things in terms of people's ability to travel over the course of recent months.

I will ask other colleagues to contribute.