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Minister for Justice Helen McEntee repeatedly said she believes there will be capacity in the mandatory hotel quarantine system when she was quizzed on what will happen to passengers that arrive without a booking if there are no rooms available.
Bookings in the system have been suspended until Monday after a higher than expected number of passengers arrived without bookings. Ministers have said there is still some capacity in the event of more passengers arriving into the State without a booking over the next few days but how much is unclear.
On Thursday, the State’s quarantine regime - one of the strictest in the world - was widened to include 16 extra countries including the US, France, Belgium and Italy.
The Government has so far not said what will happen to those passengers if the quarantine regime runs out of hotel rooms. Ms McEntee did not offer details when asked if the Government has a “plan B”.
The Department of Health responded to the question saying: “Unless exempt, you must pre-book mandatory hotel quarantine before travelling to Ireland”.
Ms McEntee said spare capacity was built into the system to ensure there were rooms for such passengers. She said: “there will be room for anybody who is coming in over the next few days.”
She added that then number of hotel rooms was being scaled up significantly on Monday and capacity will have doubled by the following week.
“There will be room for people who arrive,” she said.
Pressed on what would happen to arrivals without bookings if there were not rooms, whether they would face deportation or possible legal proceedings and imprisonment, Ms McEntee replied: “I do believe we will have the capacity.”
She said the Government has “a foresight of the flights that are coming in and anticipated numbers.”
Ms McEntee added: “Perhaps what we didn’t expect in the last week was the large volume of people who have booked that would still continue to travel into our country.
“We’re part of the European Union. There’s the right to travel within the EU. We’re part of the common travel area. We’re an international hub for those coming from the US and beyond as well”.
She said scaling up the mandatory quarantine regime isn’t as simple as adding more hotel rooms pointing to the support staff needed as well but she said she does believe the capacity will be there.
Ms McEntee was asked if there would be consequences for airlines that do not stop passengers without hotel quarantine bookings from boarding.
She said the Department of Transport has been working with carriers to ensure their passengers are aware of the legal requirement to have a negative PCR test and quarantine.
She said some people have arrived in the country using certain carriers without booking rooms and the Government was “working with those airlines to try and ensure this can be implemented in the best way possible without having to penalise people.”
Ms McEntee said the vast amount of airlines are adhering to what they’ve been asked to do.
She was also asked about the concerns Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney raised about hotel capacity prior to the list of designated states being expanded and if she should have been listened to.
She said: “everybody has raised questions and concerns around the introduction of hotel quarantine.
“If it were easy, everyone would do it and we’re the first country in the EU to actually introduce it. It’s not an easy system to implement.”
Ms McEntee said the decision to bring in hotel quarantine was supported by all parties and if issues arise “we will deal with them collectively as a government”.
On the possibility of exemption from hotel quarantine for people who have been fully vaccinated she said if the risk of them traveling here is reduced because of this and a negative PCR test “it’s important we explore the option”.
She said she expects this to be done quickly.