Dr. Tony Holohan:

If we have an emergence or a concern about a confluence of different issues, which we do, it is around some of things Deputy Ó Murchú mentioned. If unvaccinated people are travelling to places in which they are mingling with unvaccinated people from other parts of Europe, for example, over the course of the coming weeks as we open up airline travel and are not following the advice to avoid travel and coming back to this country having perhaps come from areas with higher incidence or areas which have genuine problems with variants of concerns - and some parts of Europe are not testing as readily as we are for some of that and do not know the extent of the problems they may have with variants of concern - we could find ourselves in a situation in which, for our own transmission reasons, we have been able to open up things such as indoor hospitality and there is an opportunity for people to mingle indoors in this country who have been travelling unvaccinated and have been exposed to variants. That could threaten the continued progress we are making and will be a risk to some of the congregation that will be necessary to resume normal or near-normal, for example, third level education in the autumn.

We saw at the beginning of this year, the confluence of a number of different factors such as our opening up, the change in behaviour, the time of the year and the emergence of the, at the time, B117 variant. However, we have a concern about a confluence of factors now in that there is a new variant, international travel and people who are unvaccinated mingling with people abroad and coming back into this country taking advantage of the social opportunities which may be offered if we are opening up indoor dining and so on in July. That is an emerging concern.

Anything the committee can do to help in terms of promoting that message would be welcome.