Before last week's recess, I raised my concerns with the Taoiseach in relation to putting in place a robust contact tracing system. We had seen a spectacular failure the previous weekend, when thousands of people who tested positive had to trace their own contracts. We cannot see a repeat of that. When I raised this at Leaders' Questions, I was told that there would be 90 people recruited each week and up to 800 overall would be recruited on the contact tracing side. We were looking for a gold standard in relation to this. It is absolutely vital. Can the Tánaiste give us an absolute commitment that this will be in place before the level 5 restrictions end?

In addition to the testing and contact tracing we know we have to mitigate risks. Meat plants are a risk and work practices are part of that. What is happening in relation to that? Direct provision centres are a known risk and if there was a will, something could be done about that. Is there such a will?

International travel is a known risk. Dr. Holohan was before the transport committee this week and he said that movement of populations around areas with high incidences of the disease, particularly in Europe and North America, are not safe. He said the vast majority of countries are red and getting redder. We are due to adopt the EU traffic light system for international travel this Sunday. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, told us on 4 October that a senior cross-departmental group was working on a report and on a plan and that that report would be available on 10 November. Are the report and plan still due on that date?

What is that plan for?

It is for testing at airports. The traffic light system requires a domestic approach to the wider European system. If we are going to open up on Sunday under this traffic light system, is that plan available now? How long will it take us to put that plan in place in a practical sense? The airline sector is very damaged and this sector is also vital for the connectivity of our country as an island nation. Some 400,000 Covid locator forms were submitted between 1 September and 30 October. That is a considerably reduced level of traffic movement but it is still a significant number of people. However, in the absence of testing at ports and airports, we are effectively taking a fingers-crossed approach. We need to know what is going to be put in place. We cannot come back in a number of weeks' time, having discovered that this is a known risk that we have not properly mitigated and that we have not put systems in place where we know a risk could be mitigated and we could reduce the problems. There are a number of questions there on the testing and tracing system and the mitigation of risks.

On the meat plants, we very much acknowledge they are high risk environments. It is to do with the temperature, the airflow and so on and that is why there is a surveillance programme of testing in meat plants. Thankfully, the percentage of results coming back positive has so far been very small.

On international travel, I confess I am not across things as much in the past few days as I should be but this is an issue the Minister, Deputy Ryan, is leading on. I understand we are very much advising people that we are in a level 5 period. Under level 5 restrictions a person is not supposed to go more that 5 km from his or her home, except for work, education or compassionate reasons such as caring for a relative. That applies to international travel too, so if people are travelling internationally it should only be for work, education or a compassionate reason which may involve, for example, having to care for a relative.

We have adopted the European traffic light system whereby once a week the European Centre for Disease Control, ECDC, produces a green, red and orange map of all the different regions of Europe - it is done by region rather than country - and that determines the rules around foreign travel. We are in level 5 but there is no requirement to quarantine or test for travel into Ireland from a green area. As I understand it, people travelling from an amber area can avoid the 14-day restricted movements requirement if they have a prior negative polymerase chain reaction, PCR, test. People travelling from a red area must restrict their movements for at least five days and then have a negative PCR test at that point. The whole idea of bringing in testing related to travel from amber and red areas is to reduce the risk of the virus being reseeded into the country. That is going to be particularly important given that as we get the numbers down the risk of reseeding becomes higher and we want to avoid that.

At the moment we are up to 120,000 tests per week. This compares very favourably with other countries. Of 23 western European countries, we rank eighth out of 23. We are ahead of places like Germany or New Zealand. We are behind Denmark, which is doing a lot more testing than we are but now has a higher incidence of the virus than we do. That indicates that it is not all about testing, although testing is extremely important.

On contact tracing we are trying to ensure that is up to a higher level at the end of level 5. We are trying to use level 5 to put in place even more robust testing and contact tracing regimes than we had before. Testing is going extremely well. We have the capacity to test 120,000 per week. We are really trying to scale up the number of people working in the tracing centres. I am told there are 650 people working in the tracing centres at the moment, of whom 344 are new recruits. The rest are staff redeployed from other areas.

That was an incredibly disappointing response. This is a known risk and it has been talked about for a considerable time. We cannot take the fingers-crossed approach to international travel. We saw one instance where 56 cases resulted from one case. We must put systems in place that are about more than having our fingers crossed. This system is to be introduced on Sunday. The Government must put systems in place domestically to match the traffic light system. We have not put those systems in place. We are just hoping people will comply rather than having a means to ensure they comply with those systems. We cannot switch our economy on and off with lockdowns in the way we are doing. If we are going to live with this virus, we absolutely need to put those systems in place where there are known risks. This is a known risk and Dr. Holohan pointed to it in recent days. We need to know what is planned and when it will be put in place. Will the gold standard be place with testing and contact tracing system before we end this lockdown?

One of the issues we are going to have to consider is enforcement. As the Deputy knows, at the moment the requirement for a person to restrict his or her movements having come in from abroad is not mandatory. It is very highly advisory but not mandatory. Neither is it mandatory, however, for a person to restrict his or her movements if he or she is a close contact, which is a much higher risk than international travel. One thing we are giving consideration to as a Government is whether we need to make mandatory and make legally enforceable the requirement for a person to restrict his or her movements or self-isolate in certain circumstances. It would not make sense to apply that to international travel which is actually a lower risk than somebody who is positive not self-isolating or somebody who is a close contact not restricting his or her movements. We need to be proportionate in that regard.

International travel is a risk but we also need to be realistic about that too. We are an island country but we are not an island state. We share a land border with Northern Ireland that is wide open. There is a relatively liberal regime in Northern Ireland for international travel. There are no restrictions on travel to Britain and a very extensive green list, much more extensive than ours. We do not detect an appetite from the Northern Ireland Executive to change that. We need to be very realistic about that. We could have very strict rules at our airports but they could be made a mockery of by virtue of the fact that we have open travel with Northern Ireland which obviously we are not going to restrict.