Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The decision we made on Monday night was to give ourselves time to work out the application in this regard of a whole variety of solutions we are going to need to apply. I am not going to set out here what that approach should be. The Tánaiste is talking to the restaurant and hospitality sectors today. We need to do that. We need to do further analysis of the capability in terms of ensuring we deliver on digital Covid certificates. For any further application, be it testing or any system of verification, we must ensure we have the technical capability and can deliver it in a timely manner, so we should not rule out any options. Government deliberately made a decision on Monday night recognising you do not make good decisions in that sort of timeframe. It is better to take our time in the next number of days, work out the options and then come forward with a solution. The most critical thing in this regard, which I think all members appreciate, is that, for the hospitality and tourism sectors especially, we must be quick because the summer is important, especially for the tourism industry, obviously. We must also ensure it is not stop-start and that whatever process we put in place we keep going, even in what is likely to be a difficult situation in August and September when cases will start to rise. Getting that right is not something we do immediately. We must do some work in the coming days to set out the correct approach.