Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his questions.

The first number of weeks have been extremely decision-orientated. As I said before, I have never come across a legislative programme so significant in one month. With the co-operation of everybody in the House, we are putting through substantive and significant legislation which is the substance of politics, government and parliament. That is ultimately why we are here. That legislation will underpin the July stimulus programme that we will announce this week. Hopefully, that may be of some assistance to the heritage issue the Deputy raised and will give additional capacity and supports to enable people to deal with the crisis that Covid-19 has brought about. To be fair, the Deputy has raised that issue consistently as well as the issue of the Shannon Group and Shannon Airport.

The problem in aviation is the fact that travel has collapsed. Despite all of the talk and headlines around travel, the reality is that from 1 July to 12 July last year we had 2.69 million people in and out of Dublin Airport while this month, a year on, the figure is 134,000 people. That is why aviation is on the floor. That is a significant challenge which the Government is aware of in terms of working with the airlines and with the airports.

On mandatory quarantining, it has been articulated for quite some time that it is impossible to enforce in the first instance. Second, it is questionable as to whether it is the wisest approach. In some countries where they brought in mandatory quarantining, it led to clusters developing in the actual quarantine centres.

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