Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

My understanding is that what we are actually doing now is very similar to what was in that letter from back in May of last year. It applied to non-residents of Ireland. The traffic coming in and out of Dublin Airport is mainly Irish residents. There is hardly any traffic coming out of any of the other airports, or indeed seaports: it is down to nil pretty much. I understand that back in May of last year the health authorities were suggesting a very similar approach to what is being taken, namely that non-Irish residents, travellers from the rest of the world, would have to have a designated place to quarantine. For those countries where there is a risk of the variant - it is for the health authorities to identify those - that will be a hotel, in other cases it will be the designated spot they provide in their passenger locator form. On the question of speed, since the variant became an issue just before Christmas, we immediately stopped all international travel from the UK initially as it was the high-risk area, we immediately put in place the requirement for a PCR test before anyone comes here and we have worked in absolute lockstep with the health authorities and with NPHET to implement the category 2 designations. We are completely at one with the health authorities on the management of this.

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