Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I offer my congratulations to Senators Horkan and Byrne and look forward to working with them and others over the coming years.

I ask the Deputy Leader to try to organise a debate at the earliest possible opportunity to discuss the reopening of society in line with the fall in Covid numbers. I expect an announcement next week with further proposals for the months ahead. It would be appropriate if we had a debate here. There are a couple of areas that I have real concern about.

The aviation sector is a significant employer in the State, with upwards of 150,000 people connected to or working in it. They have gone through a horrendous time. Even with best-case scenarios, it is projected that it will be 2023 or 2024 before the sector gets back to 2019 levels of activity. It will suffer for a considerable time. We need to give some sense of a plan about when international aviation will begin again. We especially need to concentrate on the digital green certificate and give some sense of when that might be put in place. Do we have the structures to deal with it? We need to look in the first instance to Europe and the US because those are our big markets. We need to start planning now. We must not take a wait and see approach; we have to have a plan. We know that we are rolling out the vaccine and we know where the milestones are. We now need to give certainty to the aviation sector.

We also need to set out a clear plan for the ending of mandatory hotel quarantine. While it was a useful tool at a certain point, once the vaccine is rolled out, we need to get rid of it quickly. It severely inhibits the ability of people to travel and move freely, even in exceptional circumstances. That needs to be addressed. I also ask that consideration be given to allowing the so-called wet pubs the same ability to trade as gastropubs and restaurants in the outdoor environment. It now appears that gastropubs and restaurants will be permitted to sell food outside and people will have the capacity to sit in the open air. I see no reason wet pubs would not be provided with the same opportunity in the open air where the spread of the virus is strongly inhibited by the outdoor experience.