Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I assure the Deputy that the Government is working collectively, and in my mind coherently, not just in managing the Covid crisis but in every aspect of the economic crisis that comes with it and across every brief. The Deputy is correct that Covid is first and foremost, because it is the essential crisis we have to manage. I am confident that the HSE is managing and has the capability in the testing and tracing regime we need for this country. That capability needs some flexibility within it to increase to 100,000 tests per week and flexibility so that if the testing needs to be ramped up for a particular outbreak, that can be done. Last week, 58,000 tests were carried out, many of which systematically targeted the key areas where we have to protect the most vulnerable, such as nursing homes, which are a key source of the problems, or the likes of meat plants, where the key element is the focus of that testing. There are 200 contact tracing staff in place and the turnaround time, as I understand it, from referral to the giving of the test result, has fallen from three days to 2.2 days. We need to push that further and we cannot rest on our laurels, but I believe that the HSE is managing, and can manage and deliver, the testing and tracing regime we need.

With regard to aviation and airports, it is a difficult balancing act between protecting lives and protecting livelihoods. Aviation and international travel are part of protecting livelihoods in this country because, as a small, open island economy, we need connectivity to other countries. To date, judging from the health data, the level of the virus coming in from international travel is very low, but we have to maintain vigilance and not necessarily just open back up, with everybody travelling again. There was valid advice from the health system to try to minimise travel and contact, but the Government now has to start preparing for the next six, nine or 18 months - a medium-term approach - where, in the absence of a vaccine, we have to manage the virus.

Within that, we will have to manage international travel. The Government will present a new medium-term Covid plan on 14 September that will include a planned approach allowing for connectivity. At a meeting yesterday with my departmental officials who are working with the Department of Health and the Department of the Taoiseach, I asked them to look, as we have said we would, at international experience, such as where other countries require testing arrangements for air travel that may reduce the risk of increased air travel and that may allow us, in certain instances, to waive the requirement for a 14-day restriction on movement when someone comes here. We have set up - my Department was helpful in this regard - the electronic register and contact tracing system, which will be an important part of that.

On the Deputy's third point, I absolutely accept the need for transparency and openness in respect of all the figures. At the same time, we have to be careful that if we had complete transparency, there could be stigmatisation of certain communities where the virus might exist. We have to avoid that while still providing transparency.

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