€500 fine for travel may be hiked to deter holidaymakers
THE €500 fine for breaching Covid-19 regulations to travel abroad may be increased to clamp down on people going on holidays.
The Government is also considering increasing the number of countries from which all passengers will be required to quarantine for two weeks without exception.
Legislation on mandatory hotel quarantining is also expected to be brought before Cabinet next Tuesday once it is finalised by Department of Health officials and cleared by the Attorney General’s office.
The three coalition leaders – Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan – met on Monday to discuss the tightening of measures for arrivals into the country.
The Senior Officials Group met yesterday to discuss plans on how to stop new variants of Covid-19 being brought into Ireland from overseas.
Central to the plans is the introduction of mandatory hotel quarantine, but other measures are also expected to be introduced.
The Government is also seeking to align its plans with new travel restrictions introduced by the UK.
However, Mr Varadkar yesterday branded the new UK restrictions “authoritarian”.
Travellers to the UK who are found to have given false information about being in a “red list” country 10 days before travel could receive a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
Those who do not self-isolate could have to pay between £5,000 and £10,000.
“I think 10 years is a bit extreme, quite frankly,” Mr Varadkar said.
“The route they’ve gone down is probably a little bit more authoritarian than I think we would find acceptable here.”
He said there is a need for a “common policy” between the UK and Ireland when it comes to international travel.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that the penalties have to be the exact same,” he added.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly spoke to his UK counterpart, Matt Hancock, yesterday to see where Ireland and the UK can “align” in terms of travel restrictions.
Meanwhile, speaking on Today FM’s The Last Word ,he said the Government is likely to continue to advise against non-essential travel for the rest of this year and into 2022.
“The strong advice from Government at the moment and for a very long time has been to avoid non-essential travel abroad – and I think that advice will most likely stay in place for the duration of the year, if not into next year, unless we get to the point where we can develop reliable vaccine passports.”
Over the past three weeks, an average of 2,000 people a day arrived in Ireland, with 60pc of them Irish citizens.
Of this 60pc, two-thirds were returning from holiday destinations, according to a Government spokesperson.
Fewer than 1pc of passengers are arriving without a PCR test.