Mr. Paul Hackett:

We can get back to travelling safely if we provide the testing environment. We have case studies from customers who recently travelled for business through the airports in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf. They have highlighted the total dichotomy between Dublin Airport and these two German airports that are maintaining connectivity and providing the safe environment that consumers want for travel. We have got to move on this issue. It is somewhat ironic that we are treating travel as a pariah and have a 14-day quarantine in place, yet we can all travel north of the Border where the number of cases and infection rates are far higher and fly in and out of Belfast Airport where there is no quarantine requirement. There are anomalies all over the place here.

I appreciate that we have never been in this position before but we are where we are. The DAA has suggested it can put testing in place. We are dealing with the single largest indigenous sector of employers in Ireland, namely, tourism, both outbound and inbound. They include the Irish Hotels Federation, restaurants, cafés and attractions. There are between 270,000 and 350,000 people employed in the sector, depending on who one listens to. If we can resolve the safety issue and reintroduce safe travel by getting testing done in airports, we do need to do that.