Ms Oonagh Buckley:

May I can come in on this? I wish to reassure the Senator regarding the numbers we have caught. On some flights,100% of passengers are being checked. Every person is going through the booths and having his or her health information checked. In the first three days of this antigen or PCR test regime, we have found a tiny proportion of people who do not have the necessary paperwork. The vast majority of people have the correct paperwork when they are stopped at border control for a spot check.

As a travelling passenger, people can have absolutely no certainty at any point in time that they will not be checked by a border management or immigration control person. People must have the correct paperwork because if they arrive at a border check and do not have it, they have committed a criminal offence. They will be referred to the Garda and may be prosecuted. That is an important message that needs to go out.

The carriers who carry out checks before people board are doing passengers a favour. They are preventing them from committing a criminal offence by arriving into Ireland without the necessary paperwork. I want those messages to go out.