Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like the Minister, I was looking forward to live events being rolled out. I have been critical of the slow pace of the roll-out of pilot events, in particular, in comparison to other countries. We could have been further along the road with those pilot events. It is welcome that the Minister has announced the use of the antigen testing on 3 July. If it had been used in the other events, we may be further down the road of rolling out and opening up live events, which would have been a very significant encouragement to musicians and others working in the entertainment industry who have been basically locked out of work for so long. The events, obviously, have to be assessed afterwards. There has to be a period of time to check whether there has been any spread of the virus, especially given that we are in dangerous times in respect of the Delta Indian variant, as people think. Can the Minister outline how many more test events there will be before the industry can go fully live again? What would set it back? Is it all hands on deck as soon as the industry gets the all-clear after 3 July?

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