Mr. Fintan Towey:

It is a legal obligation placed on the airline under regulations made by the Minister for Health pursuant to the Health Act 1947 following consultation with a range of Ministers. It is a legal obligation to which no penalty is attached so there is no penalty for the airlines but, as I said earlier, if an offence provision were to be introduced, it would have to be clearly stated and there would have to be clear rules around the type of defence airlines could mount with regard to what they had done and how they upheld what was required of them. It opens up the question of whether airlines would need to retain the information of boarding passengers. That leads to a whole layer of complexity with regard to data protection and so on. It is not something that can be done easily. It would be very difficult to do.