IRATE ITALIANS ‘CANNOT ACCEPT’ OUR HOTEL POLICY
IRELAND’S mandatory hotel quarantine system continues to provoke strong international opposition.
Yesterday, Italy’s ambassador to Ireland Paolo Seri labelled the policy ‘selective and discriminatory’.
Italy has been added to our Category 2 list, along with other EU countries such as France and Germany. The US and Canada were also included.
In a video message to the Italian community in Ireland, Mr Seri said: ‘We believe that these measures are excessive and do serious, severe harm to our co-nationals and our communities here in Ireland, and we cannot accept this.’
He said that he has written to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly expressing hope that the measure ‘is revoked as soon as possible’.
‘Italy is undertaking a serious vaccination campaign. In reality, in Italy, there exists the same variants that are hitting Ireland. So measures that are, in a way, selective and discriminatory in Ireland towards countries that are in the
EU are measures that should be done with the utmost caution.’
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney has said his brother, Patrick, did not consult with him before he branded mandatory hotel quarantine a ‘prison’.
This week, the millionaire businessman posted a tweet saying: ‘Ireland is now officially shut off from US and most of EU with little hope of being able to safely source the massive levels of hotel “prison capacity” to sustain Mandatory Hotel Quarantine.’
Speaking yesterday, Minister Coveney said: ‘I’m not going to be my brother’s keeper on this one.’
He told RTÉ radio’s Today With Claire Byrne Show that he had spoken to his brother but declined to reveal what was said.
However, the minister did say that his brother was a ‘big boy’ and that in a democracy everyone has the right to express their point of view.