The Irish government’s mandatory quarantine system was brought into effect on Friday, March 26th and within twenty four hours ran into immediate problems. Three men absconded from the Dublin hotel where they were detained. Two were returned shortly afterwards and the third has not been located. It seems as if he may have been a native of Northern Ireland and may have returned there. If that is so then it is highly unlikely that he will be returned to hotel quarantine. The episode starkly demonstrates the badly thought out and inefficient nature of the measure, introduced a year after Covid 19 first hit Ireland. Mandatory hotel quarantine was brought in as a result of populist pressure followjng the upsurge of new cases in January. The left wing parties and Sinn Fein began a campaign to introduce the measure and the government caved in without thinking through the consequences. The coalition has behaved as it has done through this pandemic – reacting, nonsensical so called solutions to something that does not require it. The statistics show that travel accounts for around 2 per cent of all new infections. The Brazilian, UK and South African variants of the virus are already present in Ireland. The 50,000 people who arrived in Ireland before Christmas from every country, including the UK, brought the variants with them.
The quarantine system has no regard for civil liberties. It is being policed by private security firms and the Defence Forces. Neither of these bodies has any legal powers to detain anyone. The gardai are called if anyone absconds and they must then enforce the ill thought out law. Why have 33 countries been chosen for mandatory quarantine and not all countries? Ireland is not New Zealand despite the fervent wish of the Zero Covid advocates. We have a land border with Northern Ireland where there are no mandatory quarantine measures. We are allowing unlimited travel from the UK. The absurdity of the system was highlighted by the treatment of the nurse and her family returning from Perth. The family had an hour and a half stopover at Dubai airport on the way. They were travelling tom Perth where there are no Covid cases and they all had negative PCR tests. Yet, they are forced to stay in a hotel room for twelve days at a cost of almost 4,000 Euro. Such nonsense!
This government has no strategy for dealing with the pandemic, other than lockdown. It has no long or medium term plan how to reopen society safely or how to protect us from variants of the virus. Everything they do is reactive – either to real or perceived grievances. Lock down the whole country or reopen gradually. Andalucia, the southern region in Spain, had a three week lockdown in January which successfully brought down the number of new cases. They now have measures such as the compulsory wearing of face masks, a curfew of 8pm or 10.30 for bars and restaurants but all shops and personal services are open.. Get real Ireland.
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