Government adds 26 states to hotel quarantine list including vaccine leader Israel

Defence Forces personnel awaiting flights to escort passengers to their mandatory hotel quarantine at Dublin Airport this afternoon...Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

The Government has added 26 more states to the hotel quarantining but has not included any EU countries in the list.

It had initially been indicated that Germany, Italy and France would be added to the mandatory quarantining list along with passengers arriving from the US.

However, the Attorney General is understood to have raised questions around the legality of such a move.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said he had considered advice from the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn to add further countries to the “designated States” list for mandatory quarantining and has now increased the list following consultation with Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney.

Albania, Bahrain, Nigeria, Somalia, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Qatar are among the countries now added to the list.

Israel, a world leader in the vaccine rollout, has also been added to the list. 

The island of Mauritius has been removed.

Travellers from these states on the quarantine list will have to book accommodation for mandatory hotel quarantine if they intend to arrive in Ireland after 4am next Tuesday.

A joint statement from both ministers noted that Dr Glynn had also provided advice with regard to "a number of other States".

"Decisions in relation to these additional states will be considered in advance of the next Government meeting. Ongoing considerations will also address various issues including the operational capacity that may be required to accommodate additional travellers and issues related to the Common Travel Area and the need to consult with our EU partners. 

"Further consideration will also be given to ways in which measures pertaining to those travelling from non-designated states might be further strengthened," the statement read.

Earlier, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said there are "real practical political and legal issues" with extending hotel quarantining to include people coming from EU countries.

"We have mandatory hotel quarantine for some people a mandatory quarantine at home for others, and what we are going to do now is add significantly more countries to that list in the coming days," he said.

However, he said extending the list to include EU countries would require "more work".

"The most practical issue is, does the Department of Health have enough hotels to accommodate all those people flying in from Europe? We don't know that. Secondly, there are legal issues around European citizens right to travel within the European Union," Mr Varadkar told RTE news.

He added that there are hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens living in the US and across Europe and "they might not have the money or the two weeks to come home under these rules".

Mr Varadkar suggested that other countries operate hotel quarantining but only for those who test positive and that would be the type of solutions that the Government will be looking at.