[ad_1]
New figures have revealed that 110,930 passengers passed through Dublin Airport in January, 60% of which were non-essential travel.
According to statistics from the Department of Transport, Dublin airport accounted for the majority of air travel to the country, and Cork and Shannon airports reported fewer than 2,000 and 1,000 passengers, respectively.
The most popular flights were recorded to originate from Poland, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
It is assumed that a large part of these arrivals were residents returning to Ireland after visiting relatives during the Christmas period.
The current passenger locator form allows passengers to indicate whether they are traveling for an essential purpose, as defined by EU recommendation 2020/1475.
In January, the proportion of passengers who completed a passenger location form and declared an essential purpose for travel was just over 39%. The remaining passengers did not state an essential reason for traveling.
From January 16, all arrivals must have a valid PCR test, regardless of whether they are traveling for an essential purpose or not.
Almost 64,000 people arrived in Dublin in the first 16 days of the month before a PCR test was required.
Travel has come under intense scrutiny since the holiday period, as the country battled the highest rate of Covid-19 infection in the world.
Under new regulations signed by the health minister this week, all people arriving in Ireland must now be quarantined for 14 days.
If a second negative PCR test is provided after five days of quarantine, the home quarantine can be terminated earlier.
“There is a limited exemption from quarantine for essential reasons, but only for the period strictly necessary, this is not a blanket exemption,” said a spokesman for the Department of Transportation.
“The exempt are expected to continue to quarantine at any other time. The exemptions include workers for the repair and maintenance of critical infrastructure. There are penal provisions if arrivals do not meet the quarantine requirement.”
If those in quarantine are not at home or “cannot report” to gardaí, they could face a fine of up to 2,500 euros or six months in prison; however, gardaí will not be able to enter a person’s home.
Many health experts and opposition leaders say the restrictions were “too small, too late” as the country faces the highest rate of hospitalization since the start of the pandemic.
The co-leader of the Social Democrats Róisín Shortall says the travel issue has been neglected by the government for months.
“As for the government’s response, at no time have we had an adequate system to monitor or control the importation of the virus, and various things have been used and not applied,” he said.
“Whether it is self-isolation or restricting their movements, there has been no oversight of that, and we know from the numbers we got every month of last year, the situation is that a very small percentage of the people who come here actually They get some contact, a phone call, and only half of those people are answering the calls. Less than 10% have been monitored, and that’s just not good enough.
“The whole thing about travel has to be about restrictions, lowering the level of the virus to be very low. It has to be about proper testing and tracking, but fundamentally, it has to be about travel controls and we saw Christmas week, what happened there.
“It’s especially important with the threat now with the new variants, and during Christmas week people were advised to isolate themselves in their rooms in their own homes – we know they didn’t do that.
“We know what happened as a result of that, and now, at this stage, the government keeps saying that they can’t monitor people in their own homes.”
[ad_2]