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Dublin Airport in July.
Source: Sasko Lazarov / RollingNews.ie
IRELAND’S FAMOUS GREEN LIST was updated again this afternoon, no countries in the latest version.
The passage from four countries to zero (goodbye Lichtenstein) actually applies as of Monday, so if you know someone who flies from Helsinki, you can still get to Ireland until then without any changes to your travel plans.
However, starting Monday, all who arrive in this country will be asked to restrict their movements for 14 days. The Green List was essentially a list of countries to which this did not apply.
The list was part of Ireland’s efforts to regulate international travel after a virtual Covid-19 shutdown earlier this year.
The list has had a controversial history, with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar raising a few eyebrows over the summer by questioning its usefulness even before it arrived.
Transport Minister Éamon Ryan admitted yesterday that the Green List “does not work”, adding that Ireland should focus on aligning itself with a proposed EU-wide plan.
In the past three weeks, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has updated the list weekly.
Initially, the list would be updated every two weeks, but as the epidemiological situation worsened during August and September, and Ireland’s incidence rate was higher than that of several other EU countries, it did not change for a month.
When it was first published, the Green List had 15 countries, but it has since been shrinking. His trajectory has been like this: 15, 10, 7, 4 and 0.
Less than zero
Source: ECDC
Today’s empty Green List is not really a surprise, as Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson said yesterday that Lichtenstein would be eliminated along with the three EU member states.
The reason countries have been cut is because their Covid-19 rates are now higher than allowed for the list.
How did a country qualify for the Green List?
When the Green List was instituted, the DFA outlined that countries would list only if they had Covid-19 incidence rates of less than 25 per 100,000 over the past 14 days, according to the European Center for Disease Control.
When the Green List started, it was a reasonable number, but as Europe struggled with a second wave of Covid-19, it quickly became out of date.
For example, in early July when the Green List was being considered, Ireland’s 14-day incidence rate was just 2.9, now it is at 120.5. On the same time scale, the UK has gone from 22.7 to the current level of 201.9.
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Therefore, in short, the Green List, as planned, is no longer updated, a fact that has already been recognized by the government.
“Almost all the countries to which we are connected are outside the parameters of what would apply,” said the Minister of Transport yesterday.
What the proposed EU-wide travel list would currently look like.
The question now turns to the proposed EU-wide travel policy to be agreed by the General Affairs Council on Tuesday.
According to the proposals, an EU country would only be removed from the EU safe travel list if a country’s incidence rate was both of them above 50 per 100,000 and the positivity rate was greater than 3%.
Ireland ultimately hopes to endorse this policy, but faces challenges in doing so, including introducing a testing program at airports and ensuring acceptance by health authorities.
However, until then, it seems that the days of the Green List are numbered.
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