Ceisteanna ar Reachtaíocht a Gealladh - Questions on Promised Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2021-01-28
============================================================

Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West

I remember well that at the time the ECDC, the World Health Organization, WHO, the Chief Medical Officer, CMO, and NPHET all advised against stopping flights from Italy because that sort of action was at the time seen as being ineffective. Much has changed and a great deal of advice has changed since then. The Deputy can go back and check over that from the press conferences etc. What we know now is that Covid-19 was present in Ireland well before that, and that someone had sadly died in Cork University Hospital, CUH, many weeks before the Italian rugby match and the associated Italian flights. It is likely that Covid-19 entered Ireland in several locations at several times.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-01-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-01-28