Defence Forces to escort  passengers to mandatory hotel quarantine

Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly: Passengers will be escorted from the plane through the airport before being passed to the Defence Forces. Picture: Julien Behal

Defence Forces staff will escort passengers to mandatory hotel quarantine, but soldiers will not be used to enforce the stay and will not be vaccinated beforehand.

The system comes into force at 4am on Friday, with anyone who has been in one of 33 listed countries in the previous 14 days required to spend up to 14 days in a facility. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said bookings had already begun yesterday afternoon after the website for booking went live.

The system will use what were called 'small teams' of Defence Forces staff to escort passengers from the airports and ports to hotels. The Defence Forces will be the day-to-day state agency overseeing the operation of the quarantine. However, those soldiers will have no powers of arrest or detention and will not be armed. If a person leaves the facility, gardaí will be called and the person "in most cases" returned to the hotel before being processed by the courts.

Mr Donnelly said passengers will be escorted from the plane through the airport before being passed to the Defence Forces.

"The passengers will then be brought on a bus to the hotel. They're brought in, they get the welcome packs, they get brought through health questionnaires and so forth and then they're brought to the rooms and essentially that is the start for most people of a stay of somewhere between 10 and 12 days," he said.

Defence Forces staff will escort buses of passengers, but these will be driven by staff from hotel group Tifco, which is providing a 'one-stop shop' for the facilities.

Mr Donnelly said the regime is "the strictest quarantine programme in Europe".

He said those who arrive without PCR tests will have to quarantine until they received a negative result. Those who do not obey the law will be fined €2,000 and/or imprisoned for up to a month. Those who test positive for Covid while in a hotel will have to stay for an additional 10 days.

Brigadier General Brendan McGuinness of the Defence Forces said his organisation will be the "state liaison official", providing the link between the State and the private company. He said his staff has undertaken Covid-19 work throughout the year but will not receive their vaccines before starting.

The Department of Justice deputy secretary general Oonagh Buckley said there will be a 24-hour appeals' process for those ordered to quarantine. The work of this group will be carried out administratively by the Irish Film Classification Office and the International Appeals Tribunal, which will provide appeals' officers. Exemptions can be granted for those arriving for treatment or in "unavoidable, imperative and time-sensitive" medical need. 

Mr Donnelly said the examples of the "Tenerife dentists" would not clear this bar.

HSE assistant national director Dr Kevin Kelleher, said there will be clinical staff at each facility.