Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The private sector is the engine of growth in this country. As a small, open economy we depend on aviation for that. With the billions upon billions of euro we have been forced to borrow to ensure people had enough to eat, live and pay bills over the course of the past year, we need aviation open as quickly as possible. This must happen first of all to support corporate Ireland and second, to support tourism, which in turn feeds into our hospitality sector, which we have beaten to death via our total aversion to risk over the course of the last year. While I acknowledge our medics have done a very good job in giving us advice on what must be avoided and undertaken, we as a Government have failed in our responsibilities to distil that down into a functioning economy and aviation is a good example of that.

I have very little time to speak this evening but anybody who is fully vaccinated should have no travel restrictions. For them there should be no testing requirements, no quarantine requirements and no restrictive movement requirements. Why else are we being vaccinated? We are up at 30% now and growing, we should lift the ban for those people immediately, particularly between here and the UK, where there is no rational reason for a ban. Obviously, people are going in through the North and up and down in any event and we need to get with the programme there.

Antigen testing seems to be working throughout the entire world but for some reason we have a total aversion to its use or benefits here. I am not a medical physician and I am not an expert but it seems that Dr. Holohan and NPHET are outliers in the world. How can their position be so different to that of the rest of the world in this context? I had hoped the senior Minister would be here, although I intend no offence to the Minister of State. I had hoped he would outline to the House what he discussed with the US Secretary of State yesterday. Did he discuss the ban on allowing people from Ireland into the USA and vice versa? What is the position for European citizens? We need an urgent update on that. What has happened to the €20 million of support for the airlines announced last November? No airline has got anything yet and it is June. Aer Lingus has lost in the region of €460 million and Ryanair in the region of €800 million. These companies are vitally important to our connectivity and employ many people. Finally, I ask that we not bring up the rear with this new digital pass. As has been said by others, as a small open economy we should be bursting at the seams to get out there and be the first to be ready to use it and be open for business.

See this speech in context