The founder and executive chairman of Irish airline CityJet says a plan to increase fines for non-essential travel is akin to 'hysteria'.
The fine for travelling abroad for a non-essential reasons is to increase from €500 to €2,000.
It would mean a couple traveling abroad on for a non-essential journey could face a €4,000 add-on bill if stopped on the way to the airport.
Pat Byrne told Newstalk Breakfast this will decimate the Irish aviation market.
"This is a demonstration, to me anyway, that all proportion and balance has come out the window and has been lost in this hysteria that's being promoted around the ways to deal with COVID.
"I think it is completely disproportionate to the problem.
"We've already had announcements about a testing regime for passengers: passengers cannot arrive in here without having taken a PCR test that proves that don't have the virus."
"So passengers already have to go to considerable effort and expense to prove that they're not actually carrying the virus."
'Non-essential travel?'
He also questioned the term 'non-essential travel': "Who defines what non-essential travel actually is?"
"If you treat the airline industry - which is already on its knees - like this, there may not even be flights out of Ireland.
"Airlines can't just say 'we have to now ignore all the non-essential travel, we can only fly essential travel' - how many people are we going to have on airplanes?"
He also accused the Government of not caring about the aviation industry.
"How does the Government think the economics of the airline industry actually work? Although I can probably answer that question myself: they don't actually care about the airline industry".
He said an increase in fines is not the way to go.
"I believe in safe travel, I believe if people are tested adequately - and prove that they're not carrying the virus - then they should be allowed travel".
CityJet offices are seen in north Dublin in June 2020. Picture by: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie"We're part of the EU, the ECDC [European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control] do not agree in the closing of borders for this.
"We are now going to become a marooned island in the Atlantic with virtually no air links whatsoever".
And he said the future of the air travel is "of great concern".
"There's absolutely no science being applied to the thinking that's going into this.
"There's no recognition of the seasonality of this virus: the fact that there will not be high levels of transmission in summer season, that seems to be completely ignored.
"All we have are calls for more and more repressive measures, draconian measures".
It comes as new Government figures show 13,606 passengers arrived into Dublin Airport between January 30th and February 5th.
Some 8,218 of these people said they were Irish residents - and of these, 5,241 said they were returning from a holiday or visit.
A further 5,388 people were non-residents.
