Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

One of the issues we are going to have to consider is enforcement. As the Deputy knows, at the moment the requirement for a person to restrict his or her movements having come in from abroad is not mandatory. It is very highly advisory but not mandatory. Neither is it mandatory, however, for a person to restrict his or her movements if he or she is a close contact, which is a much higher risk than international travel. One thing we are giving consideration to as a Government is whether we need to make mandatory and make legally enforceable the requirement for a person to restrict his or her movements or self-isolate in certain circumstances. It would not make sense to apply that to international travel which is actually a lower risk than somebody who is positive not self-isolating or somebody who is a close contact not restricting his or her movements. We need to be proportionate in that regard.

International travel is a risk but we also need to be realistic about that too. We are an island country but we are not an island state. We share a land border with Northern Ireland that is wide open. There is a relatively liberal regime in Northern Ireland for international travel. There are no restrictions on travel to Britain and a very extensive green list, much more extensive than ours. We do not detect an appetite from the Northern Ireland Executive to change that. We need to be very realistic about that. We could have very strict rules at our airports but they could be made a mockery of by virtue of the fact that we have open travel with Northern Ireland which obviously we are not going to restrict.

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