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

As the Deputy mentioned, a memorandum of understanding, MOU, is in place between Northern Ireland and Ireland. It operates mainly at Chief Medical Officer, CMO, to Chief Medical Officer level, so it is Dr. Tony Holohan and Dr. Michael McBride who mainly operate the MOU, but of course there is close contact between the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and the Minister, Robin Swann, in Northern Ireland. Regularly, there are meetings involving the First Minister, the deputy First Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and sometimes the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

We are two different jurisdictions; that is the reality of the situation. Part of the Good Friday Agreement provides that Northern Ireland is autonomous and makes it own decisions, and we make our own decisions as well. We do not have the exact same strategy and policies, but as much as possible we try to co-ordinate and align what we are doing. We have seen difficulties when there is one set of restrictions north of the Border and another south. We try to align the restrictions as much as possible. They are fairly aligned at the moment because both the North and the South are in lockdown. We have not been able to do that in respect of travel into Belfast because that is considered by the Executive to be domestic travel. We are trying to-----

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