RECKLESS TO ALLOW VISITORS
IF you’re Irish, you’re not allowed to visit the US because of the ban imposed as a result of the American fear of importing the Covid-19 virus. You’ll get turned back at immigration. If you’re American you can come to Ireland and at our airports you will merely be asked to observe a two-week period of self-isolation before continuing on your travels. Or the Americans can fly to the UK mainland and then come across to Larne by ferry and carry on by hire car over the border with no checks of any kind implemented or observed.
Ireland has minimal issues with outbreaks of Covid-19; numbers reported now each day are so low even Donald Trump probably could count them without the need of a calculator. It is a tribute to our stoicism in accepting lockdown even if there are worrying signs of creeping complacency.
But the US has more than 60,000 new cases every day and, as a result of Trump’s deliberate ineptitude and a scandalous number who see the pandemic as fake, the situation there is largely out of control – the death toll so far roughly twice the number of Americans who perished in all the years of the Vietnam War. In such circumstances the travel discrepancy makes no sense at all.
Dangerous
It’s worse than that. American publications are heralding Ireland as somewhere its citizens can go on foreign holidays. The LA Times recommended in recent days that its readers go and kiss the Blarney Stone. There are some who have asked if the cancellation of the American football game between Notre Dame and the Navy planned for the Aviva Stadium in late August will have the desired effect.
Will some of those who had booked the trip still come?
Even if it is a small fraction of those who had planned the journey, it might still be a significant and dangerous number. Shades there of the cancellation of the Ireland vs Italy rugby international in early March. It was the right thing to do but the failure to ban flights from Italy into Dublin too was a major error; while the game was off, some Italian fans used their flights and accommodation anyway – and we know what some brought with them.
We know, too, that many of those who come into Ireland at present are ignoring follow-up phone calls to check where they are, and efforts to establish if they are self-isolating. This is dramatically different from some countries in the EU where foreign visitors are more or less detained for two weeks to be sure that the chances of them spreading any Covid-19 are minimised, and it differs dramatically from the approach in Australia and New Zealand.
The simple thing to do would be to ban passengers on flights from the US (although that won’t stop the problem of those coming here via the UK).
There is an obvious reluctance on the Government’s part to do that – although the reasons for this, while we can assume what they are, have not been made explicit, and the extent of the problem has been downplayed somewhat. Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said, for example, that only 16 passengers came on the controversial American
Airlines flight from Dallas, Texas, to Dublin last Thursday, as if the numbers arriving are being exaggerated. Some would say that was 16 too many, however. Transport Minister Eamon Ryan says the total is 250 per day from all flights. Again, too many.
Flights between these two countries have never stopped; the Americans wanted to allow citizens to come home (although, d’oh!, they weren’t quarantined on return) and there is a substantial trade in cargo.
Ireland, it seems, didn’t want to stop representatives of major US multinationals based in this country coming here if they deem it necessary for commercial reasons. Those jobs – and the vast corporation taxes that many contribute – are so important that we’ll do nothing to offend the providers.
We may also be reluctant to offend potential tourists for the future, even if we don’t want them near the country now. We’ll want to be known as the land of a hundred thousand welcomes for years to come, not a place that shut the door to Americans – so we’re taking a seemingly more nuanced approach.
The Government says that the policing of a mandatory regime of those arriving would be too difficult, but it will step up monitoring and enforcement of the 14-day self-isolating attempts. That sounds very wishy-washy.
If Americans want to come here badly enough, maybe they should be taken by bus each day to the largely unused Citywest Hotel – for which the State is paying €25million – and kept there for 14 days until they resume their travels.
Burden
If that’s deemed impractical, then maybe hotels, B&Bs and those renting accommodation privately should be instructed formally not to accept guests from the US until further notice. Details of the previous whereabouts of all guests should be required and if not provided, or deemed dubious, then accommodation should not be provided. The same goes for restaurants and pubs: unless they clarify the provenance of the guest, the arrivals should be told ‘no booking’.
Outlets that don’t want to turn down custom should be reminded of how much financial support is currently forthcoming from the State to them and that it could be withdrawn if the rules are being broken.
It may seem unfair to place the burden on hoteliers and others, but something has to be done.