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

This has been a good session addressing a myriad matters. The core of it has been the general scheme of the road traffic Bill. We will look to expedite our report on the pre-legislative scrutiny. We want to assist the Minister in passing it as quickly as possible. I expect we will have a pre-legislative scrutiny report relatively quickly and we will support the Minister with that. We thank him for allowing us to cover many other areas. He will appreciate that with the timing of the announcement yesterday and the work we have done on aviation, we welcome his commitment to support a pilot of antigen testing. We would like to see it happen quickly, in parallel with the digital green certificate.

We have put that aspect forward strongly. It shows that antigen testing is not something NPHET should be afraid of. If it is a method which can reduce the risk from the spread of the virus, then it is an approach we must embrace. Leaving NPHET to one side, would it be fair to say antigen testing forms part of the Government’s policy now? Would that be a reasonable comment to make?