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About 100 recent passengers into the State who have been accommodated in the mandatory hotel quarantine system didn’t have a required quarantine booking or failed to produce a negative Covid-19 test result on arrival here, Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan has said.
Bookings in the system have been suspended until Monday after a higher than expected number of passengers arrived without bookings.
Mr Ryan also said the Department of Health is working on a plan for what will happen to passengers who arrive without required bookings for mandatory hotel quarantine if there are no hotel rooms available.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that in such a scenario: “We’ll have to find space for them as best we can.”
A total of 98 passengers who did not have required bookings for quarantine hotels or who failed to produced evidence of a negative Covid-19 test on arrival, and thus were subsequently taken to hotel quarantine, arrived here between April 8th and April 13th.
Of these, 50 were passengers who had arrived in Dublin from the designated “high risk” states for Covid-19 subject to mandatory hotel quarantine but who had transferred through other countries en route and didn’t have quarantine bookings.
Nineteen other passengers arrived from high-risk states on direct flights to Ireland but didn’t have quarantine bookings, and a further 29 were people who failed to produce evidence of a negative PCR test for Covid-19 on arrival.
On what happens if a situation arises that there are no rooms left in the mandatory hotel quarantine system, Mr Ryan said: “The Department of Health has to lead this because they’re the ones who are managing this whole system, and they are looking at plans . . . [for] if that does arise.”
Mr Ryan suggested the Department of Health will have such plans in place by the weekend.
Mr Varadkar said: “The airlines aren’t supposed to let people on the plane unless they have evidence that they have booked a place in hotel quarantine.”
He added: “These are people who are checking in at airports, not in the Republic of Ireland, they’re not in our jurisdiction.
“So it’s very difficult for us to enforce that.
“There will be occasions where people arrive in an airport or a port and don’t have a hotel booked and in those circumstances we’ll have to try to provide a place for them.”
He said he hasn’t heard any discussions that such arrivals could be deported or put in prison, adding: “We’ll have to find space for them as best we can.”
Capacity
Earlier, 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 who arrive without a required booking if there are no rooms available.
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 for arrivals – 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 affected 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 by 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 the number of hotel rooms in the system 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 no rooms available, and whether such arrivals would face deportation or possible legal proceedings and imprisonment, Ms McEntee replied: “I do believe we will have the [system] 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 required hotel quarantine bookings from boarding.
She said the Department of Transport has been working with carriers to ensure their passengers are aware of legal requirements 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 . . . [implementation] 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 Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney raised about hotel capacity prior to the list of designated states subject to mandatory quarantine being expanded.
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 posed by them travelling here is reduced because of vaccination and a negative PCR test “it’s important we explore the option”.
She said she expects this to be done quickly.