Donnelly has reservations about hotels
HEALTH Minister Stephen Donnelly has played down suggestions that hotel quarantine be introduced for people arriving into Ireland.
It was reported yesterday that the British government has ordered plans to be drawn up to allow for people entering the UK to quarantine in hotels.
Currently, all passengers arriving into Ireland must have a negative or ‘not detected’ PCR test taken no more than 72 hours before their arrival.
They must restrict their movements for 14 days, unless they have travelled from a country that is ‘green’ or ‘orange’ on the EU traffic lights system.
However, this period of restricted movement can end if they receive a negative/ not detected result of a PCR test that has been taken at least five days after arriving in Ireland.
Due to the new strains of the virus, anyone arriving in Ireland from the UK, South Africa or Brazil must self-isolate for 14 days.
When asked yesterday if the Government would consider hotel quarantine in light of moves being made in the UK, Mr Donnelly played down the possibility.
He said that while other options can always be looked at, our current system is a ‘good regime’.
‘There’s been a lot of tightening up and certainly we can always look at doing more,’ he told RTÉ’s This week programme.
‘Hotel quarantine and, indeed, putting the regime on a statutory footing for 14 days among other things, we can always look at.
‘When I was first appointed to the post last year, I spoke to Mike Ryan of the WHO at length about this and we talked about quarantine and he was very, very clear. He said you have to be careful with quarantine.
‘He pointed to, I believe it was Australia, where they had mass outbreaks because of quarantine. Essentially, people who were coming in from highrisk countries were all put into the same hotels.’
According to reports in the Sunday Times, UK ministers have ordered plans to be drawn up for a fresh crackdown at Britain’s borders to stop new variants of the virus undermining the vaccination effort.
Officials have been told to prepare for the creation of quarantine hotels for those arriving in Britain and to use GPS and facial-recognition technology to check that people are staying in isolation.
When asked about reports that UK ministers could introduce quarantine hotels, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said the British government has ‘considered all of the possibilities’
Mr Raab told Sky News: ‘We will consider all the measures in the round.’
‘We can look at doing more’