Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is a huge amount of money, particularly in circumstances where, as a former GP, he will know that a viral swab test that is referred by a GP practice in Ireland typically costs about €25. There may be differences - I am not saying there are none - but it does seem like a very large difference. In Vienna airport, and this brings me on to my next question, they are carrying out accelerated testing, which is obviously more expensive. The cost is borne entirely by the passenger and one gets the result within three hours. It is accelerated testing so it is more expensive. It is €190. I worry that if we get to 10,000 tests a day and if there is a discrepancy between what we are paying and what we should be paying, that could be an enormous cost to the Exchequer. I cannot put it any further than that.

That brings me to my next question. There has been a good deal of controversy about people coming into the country, the regime in place and whether we should be testing and quarantining.

In any event, regulations were made. They were not put before the committee but they were made and are in place.

We should also look at potentially testing people leaving the country, for one particular reason. Foynes, and later Shannon and all of Ireland, has been an aviation gateway to North America for some time. The entire economy of the mid-west is built around that. There are no flights going from Shannon to North America. There are flights from Dublin but only American residents and citizens can go on them. We have customs pre-clearance and were the first in the world to have it. Has there been any investigation of the possibility of testing passengers in our airports? I appreciate that it would be extraordinarily difficult to accommodate the numbers and to distance and segregate those who are tested from those who are not. Significant space would be needed to do that. Having spoken to the officials in Shannon Airport, while they would clearly not be able to do the testing, they would be able to accommodate it. It may well be that other airports in the country would also be able to. It might open the possibility of passengers flying from Europe to North America via our airports, using the existing paradigm of customs pre-clearance. Has the Taoiseach considered that? If not, will he consider it and will he task the diplomatic corps to see if there is any possibility of that going ahead?

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