Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

A young man left mandatory hotel quarantine in Dublin yesterday. He is an Irish student at the University of Pittsburgh. He got a second vaccination in the US on Monday, 3 May, but was taken into quarantine when he arrived home to Ireland on Thursday, 6 May. He was told by the authorities that he should have waited seven days after his second vaccination before travelling. This means that he would have been free to travel here on Monday, 10 May, but the State decided to quarantine him for much longer than that, until 17 May, yesterday, and to charge him €2,000 to boot. Why? This case also raises the issue of a double standard in the treatment of Erasmus students arriving from European colleges compared to students travelling from colleges outside the EU. The State pays the quarantine fees for Erasmus students, so why not do so for students studying in the US, such as this chap, or for those studying in other places outside the EU?

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