Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The advice that we heard last week from the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport was that social distancing on flights would occur where possible. Are there limits on the number of people allowed to board a flight? If not, is it really possible to socially distance if the flight is full? A number of weeks ago, we saw photographs of an Aer Lingus flight from Belfast at the height of the pandemic here. That is the kind of thing that we are likely to see. We all want the least amount of restriction but where people have put in so much effort, not least front-line workers and people who have cocooned for months, we cannot ignore the risks from particular locations where the R-nought is high. That has to be managed. When one turns on the radio, one hears, almost in the same group of advertisements about Government restrictions, about flights. One has to remember that flights go in two directions and people will be coming to this country from places where there is a higher rate of infection than there is here. How that is managed is critically important. Will the Taoiseach tell us about the scaling up of testing and tracing in the context of an increased number of people coming into this country by airports and ferry ports?

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