LAST UPDATE | 23 Mar 2021
THE BOOKING PORTAL for mandatory hotel quarantine in Ireland is now live.
The portal is available to access here (desktop and iOS users) or by copying and pasting https://quarantinehotelsireland.ie into your browser if you’re on an Android phone. More information about mandatory quarantine can be found here.
All passengers arriving into Ireland from designated States after 4am this Friday, 26 March are now required to pre-book accommodation in a designated quarantine facility, and to pre-pay for their stay.
There are currently 33 countries on the government’s list of ‘high-risk’ countries.
On 26 February, Minister Donnelly designated an additional 13 countries and territories as “Category 2 Countries and Territories”. These countries/territories are: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The 20 other currently on the list are: Angola, Austria, Botswana, Brazil, Burundi, Cape Verde, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Republic of South Africa, Rwanda, Seychelles, Tanzania, United Arab Emirates, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The first facility that will be available to receive arriving travellers is the Crowne Plaza Dublin Airport Hotel in Santry.
The Tifco Hotel Group has been appointed as the service provider to assist the State in delivering mandatory hotel quarantine.
Tifco Hotel Group will provide full board accommodation services to guests in facilities designated exclusively for the purpose of quarantine.
In addition, the service provider will provide ground transportation and security services, as well as health and wellbeing services for travellers, within their facilities.
Additional hotels from the group will be added as required to support the State in implementing this public health measure.
The aim of this measure is to protect everyone - especially from challenges posed by new variants of concern. It will apply to all passengers travelling from designated States, including those who have transited through a port or airport in a designated State.
— Stephen Donnelly (@DonnellyStephen) March 23, 2021
All passengers travelling to Ireland from designated States, including those who have transited through a port or airport in a designated State, even if they stay airside or portside, in the 14 days prior to their arrival in Ireland, must enter mandatory hotel quarantine.
This applies to all passengers who have been in, or transitioned through a designated State, regardless of nationality. The aim of this measure is to protect the population when there is a high risk of importation of infection from Covid-19 and from challenges posed by new variants of concern.
People must also enter mandatory hotel quarantine if, regardless of which country you arrive from (designated and non-designated states), they do not provide evidence that they have a negative or ‘not detected’ result from a Covid-19 PCR test carried out no more than 72 hours before they arrive into Ireland.
At the hotels
Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Donnelly said that passengers from the 33 countries will be met by border management and will then be brought by bus to one of the quarantine facilities.
Passengers will be given welcomes packs and a health screening before being brought to the their rooms.
Defence Force members will be on-site in an operational capacity and will be escorting buses transporting passengers.
Donnelly said there there will be no private security provided beyond what Tifco will provide itself. “The care of those who go into [quarantine] first of all is supervised by the Defence Forces as the State liaison officer, and then the day-to-day care really is the responsibility of the hotel management.”
People will be escorted from their rooms for exercise, said Donnelly, who said that people will be confined to their room until they receive a ‘not detected’ PCR test.
The Minister said that it will be an offence to leave quarantine and that Gardaí will be called in to assist hotel staff if a person leaves.
“The understanding is that you would go back to the hotel,” said Donnelly.
Passengers placed in mandatory quarantine will have access to an on-site clinical presence that could be either a doctor or a nurse, he said.
“The whole purpose of this really is to act as a deterrent because unfortunately given the world we’re living in now and given that this quarantine system really is, in the first instance, about protecting against variants obviously we want as little travel from these countries as possible.
“So we’ve looked at the UK and what England found was, within the first week or two, they saw about an 80% reduction in incoming travel. Now in other parts of the UK they saw after a few weeks in excess of a 90% reduction.
“So obviously we’ll have to wait to see what happens here. One of the issues will be Irish citizens, Irish residents who are in these countries or who travelled through these countries wanting to come home,” said Donnelly.
“So at some point are we going to have to look at what level of reduction there is.”
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