Taoiseach confirms hotel quarantine will be enacted 'very soon'

Despite legislation being signed into law on March 7, the system still hasn't been implemented

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said President Joe Biden made it clear during their conversations on St Patrick’s day that he was going to vaccinate the American population first before considering sharing any excess supplies. Picture: Larry Cummins 

Mandatory hotel quarantine will be enacted "very soon", the Taoiseach says, with the measure now law nearly two weeks.

Under the legislation announced in January and signed into law on March 7, any arrival who fails to adhere to the rules when arriving from certain countries will be fined €4,000 and face a possible month in prison. 

The move was made to stop the spread of Covid-19 variants from countries such as Brazil and South Africa. 

At Thursday's Nphet briefing, Dr Cillian De Gascún of the National Virus Reference Laboratory confirmed 24 cases of B1351 (South African) and seven of the P1 (Brazilian) variants of the disease, the "majority" of which are associated with travel.

Despite this, the system still hasn't been implemented, with no details on who will run it forthcoming as yet.

Speaking in Cork on Friday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said news on the system will come soon.

He said he expects to see mandatory hotel quarantine introduced “very soon”.

“Significant work has progressed in relation to that and the Minister for Health will be dealing with that over the next while," he said.

“I’m telling you it will be very soon.

"The Minister for Health will be in a position to do this very soon.”

Vaccine supply

On vaccine supply, Mr Martin said President Joe Biden made it clear during their conversations on St Patrick’s day that he was going to vaccinate the American population first before considering sharing any excess supplies. 

The US announced plans on Thursday to send part of a stockpile it has to neighbours Canada and Mexico, one day after a bilateral meeting with Ireland.

“That was a very clear message that he sent. He did reference Canada and Mexico, who are close neighbours and who have challenges of their own but we had a wide-ranging discussion,” Mr Martin said.

He said the key point he made to President Biden was the absolute imperative of keeping supply chains for the manufacturing and production of vaccines open.

“I’ve spoken to all of the pharmaceutical companies and that is the key point,” he said.

“If you take, for example, the Pfizer vaccine. There are around 280 materials to make that vaccine, 86 suppliers all operating in 19 different countries."

He said the government would announce the next phase of restrictions before the April 5 review date.

“I’ve been very clear about that and I’m not going to speculate right now in terms of any specific aspects,” he said.

What I said was we would look at the 5km, we would look at construction, we would look at outdoor activity and sporting activity.

“We do understand and get that people are fed up.

“But I want to thank people. I think people have been remarkable.

"We have brought numbers down from a very high level after Christmas to a relatively low level.

"They are still high and our big concern is the variants, which are more transmissible, and we now know from British research that it’s more deadly and so that is the concerning issue.”

But he said the lockdown has worked, and has taken pressure off the hospitals and ICUs.