Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I assure the Senator that we are proactively engaging with the airlines. When I say "we", I mean that staff from the HSE have been out at the airports over the past weeks working with the carriers and discussing this with them. Every country has implemented this process in a slightly different way but the earlier the certificate is checked, the better. Aer Lingus is already running a test pilot scheme wherein a subset of its passengers can upload the digital Covid certificate online. Ryanair allows PCR tests to be uploaded at the online check-in stage as well. I would hope the major carriers will all move towards allowing things to be uploaded at the earliest stage they can be. The whole point of the scheme is to reopen travel safely and efficiently because at the moment the airport has a very low number of passengers that is a fraction of what it normally has. The fear was that if we started up transport again, there would be so many queues where everybody took out a different format of document to prove that they were vaccinated or tested and it would take a long time to validate them. The idea of the QR code is that it can be quickly scanned and it goes red or green. There will only be spot-checks at immigration. We do not want unsafe crowds developing in the airports so that is part of the reason as well. It is all focused on efficiency. The Senator is right that the only way to do this is by engaging directly with the carriers, the ferry companies and the people running the ports and airports. That has been happening.