Government accused of 'stripping out' powerful allies from mandatory quarantine list
Defence Forces personnel at Dublin Airport awaiting flights to escort passengers to their mandatory hotel quarantine. Picture: Colin Keegan
The Government has come under fire for its "entirely ineffective" mandatory hotel quarantine system.
It has been accused of "stripping out" more powerful countries from its expanded list of mandatory quarantine.
The Government added 26 more states to the hotel quarantining this week but has not included any more EU countries in the list, other than Austria.
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, after a row between the Department of Health and the Department of Foreign Affairs, these states were removed.
It is also understood the Attorney General raised some questions over the impact of quarantine on EU citizens' rights, despite the fact that Austria had already been on the list before this proposed expansion.
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.
Members of the opposition have now accused the Government of playing politics on the issue.
Last May, almost 11 months ago, senior health figures advised the introduction of hotel quarantine for all overseas non-essential travel.
People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said more powerful countries have been removed.
Govt: Over 90% of people support mandatory quarantine. We better do something. Please do up a list of countries.
— Paul Murphy 🇵🇸 (@paulmurphy_TD) April 1, 2021
Public Health team: Here's where Covid is rampant.
Govt: No, no, no, we need a long list of small, non-powerful, and overwhelmingly non white countries.
He said the move essentially ignores the scientific advice and concerns over the existence of new variants.Â
"What the Government has done has been to strip out those large countries and more powerful, more influential countries where travel is actually taking place to Ireland to make it entirely ineffective," he said, adding that Ireland would have the hotel room capacity to add other countries, such as the US.
"This is just about the theatre of pretending to do something, as opposed to actually doing it. I mean, 10,000 travellers are coming in here every week, and a tiny, tiny proportion of them are required to [undertake] mandatory quarantine, which means that Covid is still coming in because there's no enforcement of the fact that people are meant to be quarantining at home, so it is almost pointless. This isn't it isn't grounded in public health advice."
Fine Gael senator Regina Doherty said she had some issues with the practice, suggesting there were issues with "quasi-prison" hotel quarantining in Australia and New Zealand which resulted in police forces being deployed.
Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher also called for Irish citizens arriving in Ireland to be allowed to quarantine at home if proper inspections could be put in place.
Speaking on RTÉ's , Mr Kelleher said that if an Irish resident is coming into the country and can identify a place other than a hotel, they "should be able to probably quarantine at home" with proper inspection systems put in place.
"Otherwise our hotel system will not have the capacity in terms of quarantining," Mr Kelleher said.
"So that is an issue, because between France, Germany and Italy alone, there must be 50,000 to 60,000 people at least – Irish citizens – living in those countries. If any percentage of them wants to come home for any reasons it could overwhelm the system."
The hotel quarantining booking system went live in Ireland on March 23, with passengers from countries on the list required to book into dedicated hotels for a 12-night stay.
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