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The government is examining ways to tighten restrictions on people entering the country and will discuss the plans with the Northern Ireland Executive, it said Monday night after a meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on Covid-19.
Government buildings declined to release the options under consideration, though they are believed to include closer quarantine supervision for people coming to the country.
In a statement, the Government said: “Ireland needs to strike a balance that allows airports and ports to remain open. . . but this minimizes the risk of virus transmission, including the requirement that people arriving in Ireland self-restrict their movements for 14 days. “
The cabinet committee discussed “a range of options,” the statement said, but officials declined to elaborate. They will be discussed by the Cabinet when it meets on Tuesday.
The moves have been sparked by controversy over the arrival of nearly 200 seasonal workers from Bulgaria to work for the Dublin North Fruit Company Keelings this week.
Previously, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the government would examine how it could get Irish workers to fill seasonal jobs as fruit pickers and farm workers.
Speaking in Dublin, where he was visiting the Civil Defense headquarters, Mr. Varadkar agreed that agricultural workers were considered essential workers, but said: “When we considered agricultural workers to be essential workers, he had not anticipated hundreds of agricultural workers. workers who come from outside the country. “
He said the government would work with the sector “to see if we can find an adequate number of Irish or people residing in Ireland, at least, who will take those positions.”
Otherwise, Varadkar said, “we have to make a decision.”
“Do we allow the harvest to fail, which is not a good thing, or do we allow workers to continue to come from other parts of the EU but with well-defined and monitored quarantine arrangements?”
Holohan Warning
The Cabinet Subcommittee on Covid-19 met on Monday to discuss a number of issues, including the foreign worker arrangements, after Varadkar promised a review of the arrangements.
Keelings said he had advertised the jobs to Irish workers, but had received few responses. Although the government has designated farmworkers as “essential,” medical director Tony Holohan cautioned that bringing hundreds of workers into the country “was not consistent” with public health councils.
“We need to keep our airports open, we need to keep our positions open,” Varadkar said.
“We need essential workers to get in and out. . . but we also make sure that it is done in a way that minimizes the risk of virus transmission. And that means asking people to isolate themselves, to restrict their movements for 14 days, that has been done since the beginning of this outbreak, but what we are seeing now are the best ways we could monitor what people are really doing. that “.
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