[ad_1]
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said that the Government’s Green List for safe travel will not be updated until the publication of the medium-term roadmap on how to deal with Covid-19 later this month.
The list would be reviewed biweekly.
On August 4, the government removed five destinations from the list: Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar, San Marino and Monaco.
The countries currently on the list are Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Slovakia.
People returning from these countries will not have to restrict their movements for a period of 14 days.
The advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team stands against all non-essential foreign travel, regardless of whether a country is on the Green List or not.
Speaking in Dublin, Mr. Varadkar said that the roadmap will address the Government’s approach to international travel.
He said that the incidence of the virus in the last 14 days does not give an indication of how many tests have been done, so in countries like Ireland, which does a lot of tests, we are going to see more cases.
Mr Varadkar said that we also need to look at the positivity rate and Ireland has been very stable for several weeks now.
He said he welcomed the announcement by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that there will be a new European approach to international travel where the European Center for Disease Protection and Control will produce a map with green, red areas and amber.
That is something Ireland can choose to do if it wishes, he said.
Latest coronavirus stories
Varadkar said that the new roadmap on managing Covid-19 is something the government wants to get right.
He said there will be peaks and troughs of the disease around the world in the coming months and the roadmap should be able to respond to that.
As a result, it is not as straightforward as the existing roadmap, he said, but it will give people certainty and a horizon in which to plan.
The Tánaiste also said the legal instrument that requires pubs to keep a record of food orders only applies until September 13 and can be extended or amended after that.
He said it’s not about the government wanting to know what people have to eat, but about making sure pubs that serve food and work as restaurants actually do so and abide by the rules.
Mr. Varadkar said that he could not guarantee that the “wet bars” would reopen after September 13 and that this will be a decision of the Government that will act on the advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team.
However, he said that he would like to give the innkeepers a date when the reopening will actually occur, because on two occasions in the past they reached a point where they thought their pubs might reopen in a few days, but they didn’t. .
[ad_2]