Travel quarantine scheme still ‘weeks away’, ministers told

Mandatory hotel quarantine for incoming travellers without a negative Covid test or from Brazil and South Africa, announced by the Government last week, is “a matter of weeks” away, ministers were told on Tuesday.

The Cabinet has been told that legislation must be passed through the Houses of the Oireachtas before travellers can be required by law to spend 14 days in a hotel, a process that the Government hopes to have concluded within weeks.

The move was announced last week by Taoiseach Micheál Martin as part of the extension of the lockdown and the tightening of Covid restrictions. He promised travellers from Brazil and South Africa, which have seen outbreaks of a new variant of the virus, as well as people who come into the country without a negative Covid test would be made to quarantine in a state-designated hotel. However, legal advice to the Government now suggests that legislation will be needed, meaning a delay of possibly several weeks.

Ministers and senior officials expect that quarantine restrictions on travellers will be extended to other countries once the country begins to open up after the present lockdown, but this cannot be done until the new legislation is passed.

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Tánaiste Leo Varadkar is understood to have raised concerns at the Cabinet meeting about the slow pace of the introduction of mandatory quarantine, while there has also been concerns among senior officials about the Department of Health to organise the quarantine programme, which will involve a considerable organisational workload. Mr Varadkar also raised concerns about the numbers of passengers that are still coming through Dublin Airport, sources said.

The Government spokesman said that the state would be responsible for ensuring that people who were eventually quarantining in hotels had access to “healthcare, nutrition, exercise” and other requirements.

Some senior officials have questioned why the Department of Health, currently managing several other aspects of the pandemic, has been asked to add this to its responsibilities.

The Government said that mandatory quarantine in people’s homes – which will be required for travellers for other jurisdictions – can be implemented more quickly, via new regulations. But these have not been implemented yet. The Government spokesman said that this would happen in the next few days.

New regulations have been already introduced to increase fines on people who violate the existing Covid restrictions, increasing the fines from e100 to e500 for people who travel outside 5km from their home without a valid excuse.

The Garda said they had stopped 280 people travelling to or from Dublin Airport over the weekend without a valid excuse and imposed the €100 penalty on them. As of Monday, the relevant fine rose to €500. Officials said that people could be fined on the way out, and on the return journey. If a number of people are sharing a car, they can all be fined separately.

Officials said that anyone who refuses a garda instruction to abandon their journey could be charged under public health legislation, and fined up to €2,500 on conviction, and/or sentenced to six months in prison.