Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There has been much talk about this legislation being a sham, a piece of theatre and minimalist. It is very important that members of the public, who many be watching this debate, understand that these allegations are untrue and that what we are doing is very real. I am basing that on the evidence. I have with me the latest report from the Department on quarantining across Europe. I will quickly go through the countries. I am happy to share this document with Deputies afterwards. One of the questions I asked the Department is whether there is mandatory hotel quarantine in European countries. There is none in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria or Croatia. Cyprus has it but only for travellers from the UK. There is no hotel quarantine in Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France or Germany. Greece has it in limited circumstances if a test comes back positive. Hungary has it for people arriving from the UK. In Iceland, it is only used if there is no alternative - in other words, people can quarantine in other places.

There is none in Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands. Norway has it but only from high-risk areas and, critically, if a person is a resident or has a residence in Norway he or she does not have to go to the hotel but can go the residence. There is no hotel quarantine in Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland but in the UK, which is at the end of the list, the situation is similar to ours. It was mentioned earlier that the UK has more countries on its list than we do, which is true, but I believe our list will grow. As a rebuttal, if I may, to the allegations that this is somehow a pretence or a sham or minimalism, they are the facts. This system of hotel quarantine, as the evidence shows, will be, by a long way, the most restrictive and the most comprehensive in Europe, other than the UK, and we are largely in line with the UK. It is important that the Irish people understand that this is serious legislation which brings in serious measures relating to the curtailment of people's liberties and it does so in a robust way. It is a legally sound mechanism that gets to what many Deputies here are looking for, which is for more countries to be added to the list.

On the subject of the UK, I wish to acknowledge that to his credit, Deputy Cullinane has been very constructive, generally, during Covid debates. He does not always, nor should he, agree with Government policy but I acknowledge that he always has been very constructive. However, I question the contributions from Sinn Féin today because its Deputies have used very strong, accusatory and dramatic language about what we are doing here. It is the case that England and Scotland have hotel quarantine in place, as does Wales by proxy through England. Ireland, hopefully, will soon have it. The one jurisdiction on the two islands that does not have in place a system of hotel quarantine and is not planning to put in place such a system is Northern Ireland.

See this speech in context