Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

After a long and hopefully productive meeting, Dr. Holohan and his colleagues will appreciate the huge frustration in the aviation sector. As a committee, we are duty-bound to raise the issues. What has come out of today's meeting is that the committee will follow up on requesting that a pilot scheme be set up to see the role that antigen testing could play in aviation. I understand that the objective is that everyone is fully vaccinated and that there is no requirement for testing. However, there still will be people who are unvaccinated. There is a body of work to be done on that and we will follow up on that with the Departments of Transport and of Health. We wish to acknowledge the phenomenal work NPHET has done. It is fair to say Dr. Holohan has been the guardian of public health in a good way with Covid but hopefully, we are now coming out of the pandemic. Aviation is a critical sector for us in Ireland with 140,000 jobs supported by it. We want to see how rapid antigen testing can assist in that process. It will in no way replace PCR testing, which is the gold standard, but will be complementary to it. I thank Dr. Holohan and his colleagues for making themselves available today.