France, Germany and Italy to join hotel quarantine list

Major European countries are to be added to the hotel quarantine list this week, Transporrt Minister Eamon Ryan has confirmed. Picture: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie

France, Germany and Italy will be added to the hotel quarantine list next week, the Transport Minister has indicated.

Eamon Ryan has denied there is a significant row within Government over extending the list of countries that are subject to mandatory quarantining. However, he admitted there were ongoing "different opinions" and "different views".

Erasmus programmes

Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said students returning home from Erasmus programmes should face hotel quarantining if more countries are added to the list.

Mr Harris said the virus "doesn't care" about the reason for travel and the Government will be guided by public health advice.

"The reason we have mandatory hotel quarantine in place, is to prevent new variants coming into the country.

It doesn't matter whether that new variant is brought in by a student, a worker or someone on a holiday, that won't matter diddly squat to people in this country if we bring in new variants. 

"So the approach we take is we will follow public health advice."

He added that not all students will be returning from Erasmus programmes at the same time.

"A lot of students will have decided not to travel, some students may decide to stay in the country that they are in rather than come home. 

"So we will work our way through these issues – at the moment there's only one European country on the mandatory hotel quarantine list, Austria, and obviously if that approach changes next week we'll provide advice, information and also practical support to any students returning from the European countries that may be added to the list," Mr Harris said.

Senior officials are still thrashing out the details of a further expansion of mandatory quarantining and a decision is not expected until next week.

Row

A row between the Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney broke out last week after public health officials recommended 43 countries be added to the list.

While Mr Donnelly wanted to press ahead, it is understood Mr Coveney said he did not believe the practice should be implemented for countries where large numbers of Irish people live.

Asked specifically about adding Germany, France and Italy to the hotel quarantining list, Mr Ryan said: "The concern about variants is very significant, so we heed that advice. Now, that will continue to change and so will systems we have to put in place.

This virus and the variants of concern that come with this keep changing and so the Government has to be flexible.

Mr Ryan said the Government would continue to be adaptive but denied there was a "big row" between different departments.

"You have different opinions, different views, people question how we do things, that's absolutely appropriate. It's depicted as Department of Health versus other departments. I don't think that's the case," he said.