Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the way into the Dáil, I met with a group of airline pilots from Recover Irish Aviation, all from Aer Lingus. They do not belong on a street corner protesting, but back in our skies. The announcements scheduled to be made this week, and especially on Friday, will be key in giving those pilots and the whole sector the hope desperately yearned for. We must see several developments this Friday and in that regard I address my remarks to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton. It is crucial that we see a restoration of the Common Travel Area with the UK. It makes very little sense for Ireland, a country with more than 300 border crossings with the UK, to have any kind of restrictive regime in respect of travel to and from the UK. That aspect must be addressed immediately, with no delays until July or August before that is made possible and travel is fully reconnected.

There is also a need to wind back on mandatory hotel quarantine, MHQ. Echoing what a previous speaker said, yes, there are wild and very aggressive variants of Covid-19 extant which pose a real health risk and mandatory hotel quarantine should be reserved for travellers from the countries where those variants are coming from. It should not, however, be applied to the general European Union block, the United States or countries which have a high vaccination level compared to us. We must enable entry from those countries without any huge kerfuffle. The reality is that mandatory hotel quarantine had high relevance back in January. Looking at Friday, 8 January, 8,248 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Ireland. However, yesterday, we had 345 cases confirmed. The two instances are incomparable and there should be no strict mandatory hotel quarantine regime in future. It should only be used to deal with the variants which pose an acute risk to our country.

Regarding vaccinated passengers from the United States, we should also allow those people to enter Ireland without any great restriction. It is a diplomatic insult, in fact, to deny easy entry and exit for those passengers. We must regularise that aspect quickly. The digital green certificate requires a lead-in period of approximately five weeks. We are also hearing from pilots and cabin crew that their sector will need a five-week lead-in period as well. It is obvious that these two things should align. We should see the restoration of aviation around the first or second week of July, with both lead-in periods elided.

I am glad that Sinn Féin is fully supporting the digital green certificate. On 1 April, the party voted against a proposal to fast-track this initiative in the European Parliament. Here in the Dáil, on 23 February, it also put forward amendments to Bills which would have brought extensions to mandatory hotel quarantine to include many more countries. There is a place for rapid antigen testing as well and I have been making this point at the transport committee to Professor Mark Ferguson, who has been advising the Government on this matter for many months. I suggested we should trial this method on a route during this interim period of four to five weeks until the digital green certificate is in place. It could, perhaps, be tested on a route from Dublin to the UK. It is €5 for a rapid antigen test and €150 for a PCR test.

Turning to Shannon Airport, last week we heard a devastating announcement for our region, which lives and dies on foot of what happens with the airport. It is the catalyst for all economic activity. Aer Lingus seized on an opportunity to close its cabin crew base at Shannon, which has operated without stoppages or breaks since 1958. The airline is again looking to the Government for funding from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, and a financial capital injection. It is crucial and imperative that we attach some conditionality to that funding, relating to key connectivity from Shannon Airport and other Irish airports. There must be commitments to the workers of Aer Lingus and its base at Shannon. In future, we must see a stimulus package specifically for the aviation and tourism sectors. The two areas are interlinked and they will be two of the last sectors to recover fully from the Covid-19 crisis. Along with colleagues in Government, I am drafting a range of policies that we will bring to the Minister next week. We ask for a favourable ear in that regard, because the sector desperately needs these policies and is crying out for them.

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