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The state has stopped collecting data on whether people travel to the state for an essential reason since early February, it has emerged, including seeking such information from those traveling from high-risk countries.
In response to a parliamentary question from the TD of the Social Democrats, Róisín Shortall, the Health Department said that the passenger location form was modified and that “the declaration on essential travel [is] it is no longer recorded ”.
According to figures compiled for the first week of February, the last week that such information was requested from incoming passengers, 46.3 percent of the 12,659 people said they were traveling for essential reasons.
Ms Shortall, a co-leader of the Social Democrats, said there was no apparent reason why passengers were no longer being asked to declare if they were traveling for essential reasons.
“It appears to be a move that will only serve to hide the facts about international travel. Why was this decision made and is there any basis for it? ” she asked.
He said the government should “do everything possible to increase transparency and public access to data, whether in relation to travel, vaccinations or the number of cases, not reduce it.”
When asked why essential travel data was no longer being collected, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health said it was “removed from the form in February with the introduction of new regulations on mandatory quarantine.”
Restrictions on arrivals from Brazil and South Africa were imposed on January 26, but plans to quickly introduce mandatory quarantine at hotels have so far stalled.
Separate figures published in the Dublin North-West TD show that nearly 10% of people who arrived in the state in February, after the government announced its intention to clamp down on travel, are from or have recently traveled to countries where “Variants of concern” are frequent, while new statistics show that more than 4,000 people arrived from countries where there is greater concern about variants of the coronavirus.
Category two countries
In all, 4,172 people came to the Republic from one of 33 countries in category two, or whose recent travel history included one. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is one of only two scheduled countries with direct links to Ireland, accounted for nearly half of the arrivals, at 1,828.
Some 1,465 people were associated with recent trips from Brazil, while 313 reported to South Africa on their forms. Austria, the only European country on the list, recorded 149 arrivals, with 96 linked to Argentina, and 321 passengers revealed recent trips to another of the 28 countries on the list.
Arrivals account for 8.6 percent of passenger locator forms completed between February 8 and March 7.
The Health Department has said it is in advanced discussions with an operator for the hotel’s mandatory quarantine service, but an advance announcement of the deal’s counterpart and when the service would begin did not materialize this week.
Ms Shortall said the figures “underscore how vulnerable we are to importing the virus from abroad.”
“This demonstrates the important role of mandatory hotel quarantine, which must be implemented very quickly and applied to passengers in all countries if we are to somehow protect our public from further spread of the virus and these variants.”
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