Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I was assuming Mr. O'Connor would mention a hotel in the curtilage of Dublin Airport, because that is what has happened heretofore. No Member of Dáil Éireann, going into the Chamber last week, found this palatable. It is certainly a measure we want to see in place for the shortest possible time. If we determine somehow that the Omicron variant is not as volatile as it is now believed to be, that measure needs to be rolled back on immediately. However, the point I was trying to make was that ten months ago, when mandatory hotel quarantine came in, a hotel quite near to Dublin Airport was selected. There was probably logic to that because it was largely just Dublin Airport that had inbound and outbound flights. Obviously, that has now changed.

If a passenger were to come through a transit flight, maybe landing in Heathrow Airport, and travelling onwards to Shannon Airport, we would need to have capacity in the mid-west and near Cork and Knock airports. It is quite conceivable that someone could be coming from a flight this week or next from an African nation, especially South Africa or its adjoining countries, travelling through Africa and coming out through Morocco and on to London. We need to have that capacity in these regions.

My next question is for Mr. Towey. I do not wish to repeat all the measures, because members have already extensively questioned him on these. Is the same level of scrutiny applied to smaller airfields such as Weston aerodrome and to private jets coming into the country? This question has come up time and again. In terms of civil aviation some people fly in and out in small Cessna turboprop planes or jets from the UK or central Europe. Are all those layers of checking, scrutiny and verification also applicable at smaller and medium-sized airfields, such as Weston aerodrome?