Dr. Tomás Ryan:

I will start by thanking the Chairman and the rest of the committee for the courtesy they have extended to me and my colleagues today and on other days of this committee's sittings. It is clear that Northern Ireland, Scotland and, increasingly, England and Wales are slowly coming around to a zero-Covid-19 policy. The Scottish First Minister, Ms Nicola Sturgeon, has said that all four UK Governments are committed to suppressing the virus to the lowest possible levels and keeping it there. That was said in the Scottish Parliament yesterday, 22 September. It has been argued that we should work within the structures of the Belfast Agreement, including the east-west structure, to share, co-ordinate and implement an all-island medium-term and long-term strategy to deal with Covid-19. Where possible we should pursue a two-island strategy, aimed at not just suppression but elimination. Moreover, we should work within the European Union and with the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to help all the member states reach that point piece by piece in order to reach what has been termed "Level 0" in areas free of Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

We want to emphasise that we do not consider this goal an extreme position. We can think of zero-Covid-19 in a regional sense, including within the island of Ireland. We very much welcome the Government's new structure because it allows us to deal with things on a regional basis, moving towards level 0 from levels 3, 2 or 1. I can offer a few operational recommendations that we think would help with that. It seems clear that we need to learn from the best players in the world. In my view, they are Taiwan, South Korea and, to a certain extent, New Zealand. In Europe, we should look to the Scandinavian countries for liveable ways to keep transmission at as low a level as possible. Finland is the clear winner by all measures of economic activity, healthcare outcomes and infection rates. We should be paying close attention to what Finland is doing. We need more academic advice on our testing programme. We need to actively investigate rapid testing and how it can be adapted for use on the Irish population. Lastly, we need to actively incentivise the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors in Ireland to look for opportunities to mass-produce technologies that may be valuable, not just for us but for other countries.