Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a closing speech, but I might try to address some of the points raised by some of the Deputies who are present. I will start with the questions raised by Deputy Connolly. With regard to appeals, as of 25 May there have been 1,518 appeals. Some 11%, or 166, were granted and 1,352 were refused. As of 20 May, the breakdown of the reasons for the 157 granted appeals were as follows: 62 were exempt vaccine, PCR or other exempt reasons, two appeals had completed quarantine, one appeal had a negative PCR test after quarantine, 50 were granted for medical and exceptional reasons and 42 were granted for humanitarian reasons. I would be very happy to provide the Deputy with the information she seeks. I referred in my opening contribution and she will be aware of it. The regulations are available. A panel of barristers is used.

Questions were asked by several Deputies about the exemptions. Deputies will be aware of the exemptions listed in the original Act, which included valid annex 3 certificates for drivers of heavy goods vehicles, airline pilots, aircrew, maritime masters and many more. Six exemptions were added as follows: passengers transiting through an Irish port or airport; athletes competing in events of international standing; newborn infants born abroad returning to the State with their families; travellers who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19; travellers returning to the State after receiving unavoidable imperative and time-sensitive medical treatment, which extended to their carers or dependents as well; the sixth category of exemption was for travellers providing an essential service to the State. They are the exemptions that are in place.

Several Deputies referred to the need for fully vaccinated people from the United States being able to avoid mandatory hotel quarantine. I want to restate that this is currently the case. Those who are fully vaccinated in the US, in the vast majority of cases are vaccinated with one of three of the four vaccines approved by the EMA, so people coming here from the United States who are fully vaccinated do not need to go into hotel quarantine once the vaccine is one of the EMA-approved vaccines.

Some Deputies asked for stronger engagement with Northern Ireland. There is ongoing engagement with Northern Ireland. I share the view that we need as close an all-island approach as possible. Various Deputies asked for a report on the operation of mandatory hotel quarantine. I would be very happy to provide that. There are a lot of facts and figures. I will ask the Department to kick that piece of work off immediately. There is an awful lot of ongoing daily and weekly facts and figures and reporting on the system. It is being managed very closely. If Deputies find it useful, I would be very happy to ask for an up-to-date report encompassing all of the information we have.

Some Deputies asked if we could consider additional vaccines. The one that is of most interest is the Sinopharm vaccine, which is used in the Emirates. It is not one of the ones approved by the EMA. My understanding is that it is under rolling review. My information might not be up to date, but the last time I checked authorisation had not been sought within the EU from the EMA. I understand the point and, as Deputies have indicated, Sinopharm is part of the EU digital green certificate recommendation as it has been recognised by the WHO. That is certainly something we can ask the public health experts to take a look at.

In terms of barriers to travel, there has been a fair amount of comment on Ireland not moving quickly enough. A wide range of views have been expressed. We had the usual position from People Before Profit, whereby it demanded mandatory hotel quarantine but then opposed it when we brought it in. That of course is the right of Deputies. Others very reasonably expressed a broad range of views. Some believe that we should not have mandatory hotel quarantine and that the domestic public health measures are too harsh. Others believe we should have had mandatory hotel quarantine from day one and we should have essentially sealed the island off and gone for a zero Covid approach, which would require much harsher measures to be in place and we would not be having a conversation about relaxing any of those measures now. There is no monopoly on wisdom in this regard. There is no right answer to any of this. For what it may be worth, in terms of Ireland's timing on mandatory hotel quarantine and the measures we have in place for international travel, for quite some time Ireland has either adopted the EU-wide approach or we have gone considerably further than that. Ours is the only country in the EU that has such a system of mandatory hotel quarantine. The system we have here is by a country mile the most comprehensive in the European Union and it is now more comprehensive even than the United Kingdom in terms of the list of countries. Even when we did not have it, we had considerable measures in place, and we did that as part of an EU-wide approach. Measures have been in place for a very long time.

It has been suggested that if we had mandatory hotel quarantine in December, for example, we could have avoided the awful situation here towards the end of December and in January. I do not believe that would be the case at all. If we had the current system of mandatory hotel quarantine in place, the protocols we use to designate countries, which is by a mile the most comprehensive of its kind in the EU, would not have stopped what happened in January. The UK signalled that it had a very serious issue with a variant of concern, which was discovered in Kent on a Friday in the run-up to Christmas. We worked right through the weekend and by Monday we had met and very serious restrictions were put in place, including a complete ban on travel to the UK, which is more comprehensive than mandatory hotel quarantine. The genome sequencing which was done subsequently has shown that there was a lot of it here. The idea that the current system of mandatory hotel quarantine would have somehow stopped what happened here in January simply is not true. We moved very quickly. We moved much quicker in fact in response to the UK variant than the current system of mandatory hotel quarantine allows in terms of designating states as category 2 states. That is just where that is.

I conclude by thanking Deputies for what is a really important debate. As I said, we are only looking to extend this to July. People have very reasonably asked why we are not looking to extend it longer. It is because we have advice from the Attorney General to that effect, which we just got in the last few days. It reflects the fact that the protocols on international travel are moving very quickly right now. The digital green certificate is coming. I get a sense there is very broad support for this around the House. The Taoiseach will make a very detailed statement tomorrow on Ireland's timing and criteria for it.

On the basis that the situation is moving so quickly, we thought it would be prudent to just seek an extension from both Houses for the minimum time required, as has been commented on by many Deputies right across the House in regard to these powers for mandatory hotel quarantining and, indeed, the Bill we are moving straight onto, the Health and Criminal Justice (Covid-19) (Amendment) Bill 2021, in terms of the public health measures. They are draconian powers and they do not sit easily with me. These are powers I would much prefer no Government in Ireland had. They are time-limited, as they should be.

On mandatory hotel quarantining, like the public health measures, while of course we have not got everything right, it has worked. The public health measures have worked and they are working. Mandatory hotel quarantining, which first and foremost is about stopping the uncontrolled spread of these variants in the country, has worked really well. For those reasons, I ask Deputies to support the motion, which is for a relatively short extension, so we can maintain our protections against these variants of concern while we get up and running with the digital green certificate and we keep going with the vaccine programme.

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