Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It goes without saying that our aviation sector is incredibly important for our island but it cannot afford to wait much longer before travel starts to resume internationally. Devastated tourism and aviation industries have been crying out for a plan and the position is becoming increasingly frustrating as vaccine roll-out progresses. We have seen non-essential travel between Britain and the North resume and we must act now to harmonise the common travel area by aligning with the UK position. The European Union’s digital green certificate will be an important step in allowing for the freedom of movement of people within the EU. We must act quickly to ensure there is no avoidable delay in getting the process set up and giving people the option to avail of this important initiative by the EU. In a similar way, fully vaccinated travellers from the United States should be welcomed into Ireland under a similar, if not identical, framework to the proposed digital green certificate. This should be applied to all travellers from the United States.

The Government must adopt a position on the use of rapid antigen testing, which is scientifically proven and which would enable Ireland to emerge as quickly and safely as possible from the dreadful pandemic. We have multiple test programmes running and there does not need to be a delay in implementation within the aviation sector. This is a proven technique in detecting infectious cases so I ask that this be given serious priority by the Government.

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