No quarantine on f lights from US after Cabinet row
TRAVELLERS coming here from the US, France and Germany will not now have to stay in quarantine hotels, following a Cabinet row.
Plans to add 43 countries, including several from the EU, to the high-risk Covid list have been shelved after strong resistance from Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney.
Mr Coveney had previously said that the rules ‘should not apply’ to countries where there are a significant number of Irish people.
It is also understood Attorney General Paul Gallagher wrote to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly warning that it may be illegal to charge EU citizens to stay in mandatory quarantine hotels.
Those EU countries will now not be included on the list. However, sources say they could be added later. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar told RTÉ’s Six One News last night that a significant number of countries will be added in future, but that there are practical issues to be considered.
‘Has the Department of Health enough hotels to cater for the demand, for example. There are also legal issues around EU citizens’ right to travel,’ he said.
There are ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Irish citizens living in the EU and America ‘who may not have the money’ for hotel quarantine, he said, adding that Ireland already has the strictest security around travel in the EU.
‘All non-essential travel is against the law here,’ he said.
At present, all arrivals from any of the 33 countries deemed high risk regarding Covid have to quarantine for 12 nights at a hotel at a cost of €1,876 per adult. The stay can be reduced if a person receives a negative test for the virus on Day 10 of quarantine.
Countries on the list include Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Chile, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe. Travellers are required to pre-book accommodation in a designated quarantine facility and to pre-pay for their stay.
Mr Coveney told Highland Radio yesterday: ‘This is primarily about Irish people coming home... Should we be putting them into a hotel and charging them for the privilege?’ He added: ‘It is one thing having a couple of hundred people in two or three hotels, being managed by a contractor and the Defence Forces and working with the Garda Síochána and the Department of Health.
‘It’s quite another thing having thousands of people in hotels, which would have the implication of expanding this to lots of countries, particularly EU countries where there are a lot of Irish.’
Former minister for justice and foreign affairs Charlie Flanagan compared the mandatory hotel regime to a Monty Python sketch.
He told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘When you look at what happened in the last week, you can see the type of problems we have with mandatory hotel quarantine.
‘Three men escaped, gardaí were ill equipped when dealing with the arrivals and there were problems with communication – it was almost Monty Python-like.’
The former minister added: ‘To extend this to a further 43 countries without due and careful consideration is unwise.’
‘It was almost Monty Python-like’