Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will focus my comments and questions on international travel and the aviation sector and colleagues will pick up on other issues.

The British Government's announcement on the introduction of mandatory hotel quarantine from Monday next completely exposed the Irish Government's excuses and delays in this area. Mandatory hotel quarantine can be done and there is no reason it should not be done here for all non-essential arrivals. The advice from the Chief Medical Officer, CMO, and National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, has been crystal clear on this. They stated, as recently as 14 January, that the discretionary elements of quarantine and post-arrival testing should be removed. They also stated that every effort should be made to remove these. Neither direction has been followed. Yet again, the public health advice has been shelved during this pandemic.

While the Administration in London announced detailed plans for self-funded ten-day quarantines with strict measures and severe penalties for breaches, the Minister and his colleagues are still at the stage of confusion and indecision. It also announced mandatory testing for all travellers on days two and eight post arrival, something that Sinn Féin has repeatedly called for in Ireland but that the Government has inexplicitly resisted.

We have had nearly a year of inadequate and reactionary measures on international travel that have protected neither lives nor livelihoods. Every measure introduced to date has been half-baked. On 1 June, Sinn Féin stated that a traffic light system for international travel should be examined. Unbelievably, we had to wait until November before it was introduced, and then only at the behest of the EU. The Government waited until the passenger locator form was ignored en massebefore making it mandatory, and follow-up remains inadequate. Well in advance of Christmas, we called for mandatory testing of arrivals over the Christmas period. The Government introduced voluntary, expensive airport testing, which was ignored by the majority of arrivals, resulting in severe consequences. Even the recent airport fines that the Government stated would be a major deterrent have failed, with people just paying the €100 or €500 and going on their merry way to the Canaries or elsewhere.

It is incredible that NPHET issued advice on 14 January, the Government responded and within hours, its proposals and measures were proven inadequate. I cannot understand how no lessons have been learned. The Government is constantly on the back foot as regards international travel. Leaving our ports of entry wide open during a pandemic has not benefited anyone over the past year. It has not helped aviation workers, kept the travel sector afloat, kept out Covid variants or reduced infections on our island. We know there are combined variants with increased infectivity, transmissibility and mortality levels associated with them.

The Government's measures have not worked and will not work. It needs to go back to the drawing board yet again. A system of hotel quarantine for all non-essential arrivals needs to be introduced immediately until such time as our infection levels drop, our health system is not at risk of being overwhelmed and the vaccine roll-out is more advanced. We realise that this means an extension of the current challenges facing those working in the aviation and travel sectors but decisive action now, with adequate sector-specific supports, will help these industries recover more quickly. Britain is introducing mandatory quarantine for arrivals from 33 countries, covering 800 million people. The Government has stated that it intends to introduce mandatory hotel quarantine for arrivals from just two countries, Brazil and South Africa, at some future date as yet unknown.

Has the Minister's counterpart in London been in contact with him about Ireland being used as a back door into Britain to avoid the latter's quarantine measures? When will the Government introduce a more comprehensive list of countries to which hotel quarantine will apply?

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