John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the issue of visas and how we are not granting any visas to people from South America. A couple in north Louth are about to get married. The girl, who is marrying a guy from north Louth, is from New York City and is a US citizen. Her family are US citizens with the exception of her mother, who has a Colombian passport. Her mother has lived in New York City since 1985 and the last time she was in Colombia was seven years ago but she cannot come back to Ireland for a family wedding in two months' time because we are not giving any visas to anyone from South America. If we want to appear to be an open country that is open again for business, now that the vast majority of our vulnerable and elderly people are fully vaccinated - this individual is fully vaccinated - we need to be able to look at the nuances of situations instead of having a blanket ban. The nuances of this situation are that we are not allowing an individual to travel to our country because she is operating on a passport from a country she has not been in for the past seven or eight years. I would really appreciate it if the Minister could come to the House or if we could receive some information about what we are planning to do to lift these visa restrictions on other countries as we begin to open up travel and our economy and get our country open again. I do not think it is acceptable any more to just put a blanket ban on everything like this. We need to look at the nuances and to resolve this as quickly as possible.