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REGULATIONS MAKING IT a legal obligation to quarantine after arriving into this country have been signed by the Minister for Health.
The laws relate to those who are required to quarantine at home, with primary legislation being drafted to cover the planned mandatory quarantine in hotels.
The regulations state that people who have arrived into this country are required to “self-quarantine” for a period of 14 days, beginning on the day they arrive here.
The quarantine must take place in a persons residence or the location stated on their Passenger Locator Form, which remains a legal requirement to complete.
The period of quarantine no longer applies if a person receives a negative Covid-19 PCR test that was taken five days after arrival.
These regulations do not apply to persons who have been in a “category 2″ country in the previous two weeks. These persons and those without a negative PCR test are required to quarantine for a full 14 days.
Brazil and South Africa are currently the only countries categorised as such but the regulations state that other countries can be added to this list by the Minister for Health “having been advised by CMO” and “after consulting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs’.
Exempted
The regulations also detail eight different categories of traveller who are exempted from the quarantine protocols.
These include people certified as providing essential goods and services, persons travelling for medical reasons, elected office holders, gardaí and members of the Defence Forces.
There is also an exemption from the 14-day quatrain for people arriving from a country where securing a PCR test was not possible.
The regulations also contain a specific exemption for high-level sportspeople which says that the regulations don’t apply if the person is “necessary in relation to a sporting event” as designated by Sport Ireland.
According to the regulations, the person is only allowed to leave their residence to engage in competition or training but that the sporting event concerned must be “at an internationally important competitive level”.
This stipulation comes ahead of the beginning this weekend of the 2021 Six Nations rugby championship which had been at risk due to quarantine being introduced in participating countries.
The Cabinet heard this week that legislation is required to enforce rules on mandatory quarantining in hotels for ‘category 2′ arrivals , with this expected to be introduced in the coming weeks.
‘Two islands’
Following previous discussion around the possibility for a “two island solution” as regards quarantine measures in Ireland and Britain, Scottish officials have come out in favour of such an approach.
Scotland’s national clinical director said the best case scenario for avoiding a third wave of coronavirus will be to include the Republic of Ireland in measures due to the existence of a common travel area with the UK.
The Scottish Government has said it will diverge from current UK policy which will see a system of “managed quarantine” brought in for travellers arriving from certain countries.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said those measures do not go far enough and her government will bring in such a system for all travellers from overseas, while also lobbying Westminster to tighten the rules.
Speaking at the Covid-19 Committee at Holyrood, neither Prof Leitch nor Scottish Constitution Secretary Mike Russell could give a date for when the new measures will be put in place.
But Prof Leitch said: “The public health advice would be that a five-country solution would be the favoured solution – you can imagine why, it’s not rocket science.
“Dealing with any access, via Dublin, from another country would be helpful to us.”
He said if an agreement cannot be struck with other countries in the UK and Ireland, measures should still be put in place in Scotland to ensure coronavirus does not come back in through international travel.
“I’ve said many times at this committee, it doesn’t matter where your low prevalence area is – it could be just Dumfries and Galloway, it could be just the Western Isles, it could be Scotland, it could be the whole common travel area – you have to keep the virus out once you’re at low levels,” Prof Leitch said.
- With reporting by Press Association
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The Elite in this country are not going to take their foot off the ordinary persons neck until we get up off our knees
Well said!
We have some way to go before we even get to our knees.
The most likely scenario is stagflation (low growth, high inflation) for the rest of this decade, and even beyond.
That will mean a few bank bail-ins, such as in Cyprus, so be very careful with your savings, if you have any.
Oh, and an austerity budget each year too.
Look out below.
2014? We’re barely surviving in 2013, another year of austerity will totally sink the country!
I really don’t think people realise that austerity is permanent. Even if we reach a stage when we can balance our incomings and outgoings, every spare cent will be used to pay rich people’s gambling debts for generations. There seems to be a fallacy that when the bailout ends our trouble will be over. The day our mighty government legalised wealthy people’s gambling debts ensured permanent austerity for ordinary people.
Lately I’m just feeling compelled to leave this link in places like this:
http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.ie/2013/07/the-emperor-has-new-clothes.html
We export or starve, its that simple. Creating parasite jobs such as water meter installers and readers is a cop out way of governing the nation and only business large and small have ever created real jobs so get the obstacles such as petty EUSSR rules out of the way and let them get on with it.
“We export or starve, its that simple.” Nonsense. Ireland produces far more food than it consumes.
George,
The potato famine was a long time ago. We produce an excess of food which we export. In the event of Irish people starving as Morticia seems to think is imminent, that food supply would be retained in the country or the government would quickly find themselves removed from power, probably violently.
Morticia also doesn’t seem to accept the role of government in creating jobs. The private sector will never provide an adequate supply of sustainable jobs for the people. How could they when the objective of private enterprise is to produce as few jobs as possible and pay them as little as possible in order to maximize profit.
The necessity of the state intervening to plug the massive gaps in the free market system and create employment for its people was well understood from the 1930s onwards. Post WW II (near) full employment was the norm in the U.S, UK, Europe, Australia, Canada etc. which rarely had unemployment higher than 2% and where prosperity was far more equally shared. The government employed millions of it’s own citizens in these countries and did so with newly created money from their own central banks where necessary.
Since the 1980s however, self serving neo liberal economics has gained world wide traction which sees an elite get ever richer while they peddle myths to the rest of the population such as “We must balance the books” , “Austerity is the only alternative”, “Banks are the engines of growth”, “ Don’t restrict the markets with regulation”, “ only business large and small have ever created real jobs “ etc etc.
Obviously the use of a ‘figure of speech’ can be confusing for some, but where does all the magic money to fund the generosity of our various govenrments come from ? Do we have a big collection box somewhere for donations or do we sell stuff abroad to bring in the few bob.
Morticia, apologies if I read too much into an off the cuff figure of speech. We can export goods to generate money that is true. Real sovereign countries can also create their own currency to fund a budget deficit if the so wish. The U.S does not need to borrow dollars in the financial markets. It can simply create them by pressing keys on a computer in the Federal reserve. Ireland handed that power over to the ECB when we joined the Euro and are paying massively for that mistake now. The ECB has created over a trillion euros in that’s past few years and distributed it to the European banks at extremely low interest. Ireland has been forced to massively hike our taxes and shred our social systems to get the funding at a much higher which the ECB can create on a whim. This is neo liberal economics in a action.
“neo-liberal economics” what exactly does that mean????
the UK and US employed the theory of “Quantitive Easing”, the US more than the UK, especially considering all their austerity cuts in comparison with the US.
The ECB should do so aswell without the restraints!
Each job is worth 20 k, looking at the jobseekers app ,its hard to see a job paying more than 18k..that includes some trades ie.welding/painters/panelbeaters etc..If the race to the bottom continues the country will never recover.
Too many employers taking advantage..if you cant pay a living wage you shouldnt be in business.
How is someone going to be able to spend on minimun rate..as a poster said on another thread recently there are over two million medical cards in issue..so apart from the approx 350,000 on the register there are over 1,750.000 people who cant afford basic healthcare from their wages/salaries.
If thats not a damning indictment on a country..what is?
The race to the bottom benefits no one.
I hear what you say but I absolutely despise your attitude!
forgive me if I’m wrong but the way I interpreted your last comment was “work pay = x”, “welfare et al = x + 1″, why should I get out of bed?!??
please tell me I’m wrong?!?
wrong end of the stick Pat.Can you explain to me how having almost 2 1/2 million people dependent on welfare to some extent is benefitting the country.Only people the minimun wage benefits is the employer, who is effectively subsidising their wage bill via FIS etc
I know from experience that the working poor who have allmost no spending power after paying the essentials are paying the price.!
If you have no discretionary spending because of low wages/high taxes..(relatively) and stealth taxes..how can you lift the local economy?
Everyone cant earn 50k+but surely a worker is entitled to a living wage in one of the most expensive countries in Europe!
I am sure IBEC will have a counter agreement soon. “Austerity” call it by the correct name a Recessionist policy
“argument” not agreement.
“indirect taxation or other income streams instead” In other words introduce further regressive taxes that screw the workers, poor and unemployed and don’t tax the incomes of the rich!
A suggestion IEA and Noonan make 2013 the last budget of austerity otherwise there will be no Ireland to rescue.
Hopefully someone from the business communirty can answer a question relevant to this item. How much money do we need in circulation to create a job? I was told by a person [expert in such matters] that each £100,000 in circulation supported a real job but that was in c1984, is there a more recent figure? With so many ‘jobs’ piggy-backing on manufacturing it would be nice to figure out where our priorities lie.
have your say