Government to put more countries on quarantine list

An empty Cork Airport has just one airline serving one route, three times a week. File photo: daa

More countries are to be added to the mandatory hotel quarantining list after the Government received further public health advice on the matter.

Transport Minister Eamon Ryan has confirmed that Ireland will follow the UK in broadening the list of countries from which travellers will be subjected to stricter measures.

While the Government has yet to set up the promised hotel quarantining, those travelling here from Brazil and South Africa have been so far named as coming under the new system. It is expected that the legislation required will be brought to Cabinet next Tuesday and Mr Ryan hoped that the new mandatory quarantining system will pass through the Dáil and be rolled out within a matter of days after that.

The UK has announced that it will impose a 10-day hotel quarantine on people arriving from 33 "red list" countries.

Mr Ryan told the Dáil: "The public health advice will come later this afternoon as to which additional countries we, similar to the UK, should consider applying much stricter restrictions. We will implement that advice with full speed.

He added: "It would be unfair if we at home were restricting our movements and our lives in many different ways when non-essential travel was seen to be facilitated."

He said fines for those taking non-essential foreign trips will be increased to €2,000, as already flagged by the Taoiseach.

Mr Ryan said:

We would also consider other measures should such non-essential travel continue.

However, the Dáil heard that airline travel has collapsed since the onset of the pandemic and it will take years for it to fully recover.

Cork Airport has just one airline serving one route, three times a week, but the Minister said airports and ports are essential and some travel will always be necessary.

Mr Ryan said: "According to the latest figures from yesterday, the level of travel into the majority of our airports other than Dublin Airport had seen a 100% reduction because there was not a single passenger. 

"Dublin Airport had seen a 98% reduction. That amount may need to be reduced further."