Cliona O'Flynn

But what you will have now is you have the regional government head saying he wants an urgent meeting with Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish PM, because what has not been clarified, he says, is how the local population will be protected from any potential transmission of virus from the passengers.

because we still haven't got a very clear view of how non-infected passengers or passengers who don't seem to be infected will be transported from the ship and where will they go to immediately?

Will they go to a hospital for a check?

Will there be a sanitation unit set up at the dock?

Will they be isolated in hotels as happened during COVID?

Or will they be brought to planes?

And if they're brought to planes, will they be planes that are specifically designated for

to bring these people to their individual countries.

Because I can't imagine that you're going to have Jet 2 Ryanair and Aer Lingus agreeing to take passengers from these ships, you know, onto a regular flight that's going from Tenerife to their home destinations.

So a lot of things still to be clarified.

Very much so.

Clavico is from the conservative wing of Spanish politics, from the Partido Popular, which would be the right-wing party.

And Pedro Sánchez is the leader of the Socialist Party, the PSOE.

I mean, there were rumblings yesterday even that one of the reasons that Sánchez had said the ship would go to the Canary Islands was

is that there are regional elections taking place soon in Andalusia, and that would be where the ship might dock if it was to go up to the Spanish mainland.

So, you know, all sorts of barbs are being fired from different political parties, which is a real shame because what we are looking at is a humanitarian question rather than one of politics.

And I mean, certainly as a journalist working here, I do think

It's a shame that any regional politics should be coming into play when really the real question is, how do we help the passengers who are on this ship?

Where is the best place that they can go to dock on their way home?

I mean, I live here, so, you know, I'm as at risk of infection as anybody else.