Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have considerable testing and tracing capacity now, with capacity to test 100,000 people a week and to trace many thousands of people which is not being used at the moment because of the low level of demand for it. It can be used if we need to do so in the future. The future will involve making sure that we have a very strong testing and tracing capacity, so that any important cases and new clusters are identified quickly and can be stamped on quickly, so that they do not spread and we do not have to engage in any more lockdowns. What the Deputy says is absolutely correct about social distancing on planes and in airports being extremely difficult to achieve, so that is another place where people would be advised to wear masks. We do not have any air bridges yet, so we are advising people not to come here and not to fly out of the country. To give an idea of the countries where there is a similar number of low cases to here, there were 16 in Ireland yesterday, 15 in Finland and ten in Greece. In countries such as those, the number of new cases is very low and therefore the risk of journeys between those countries would be very low. It can change quickly. We thought Portugal was one of them and there were 400 cases in Portugal yesterday. It is still a changing picture.

See this speech in context