Less than a quarter of people who filled out passenger locater forms upon arrival into Ireland between August and November received follow-up calls to confirm they were restricting their movements, Department of Health data show.
More than 445,000 Covid-19 passenger locater forms were filled out between August 26th, when the electronic system came into effect, and November 6th.
However, just 105,000 successful follow-up calls were made to passengers who had arrived from high risk countries between September 1st and November 6th to verify their place of address, the department said.
It is an offence not to fill out the Covid-19 passenger locator form, which was introduced to allow tracing of confirmed or suspected Covid-19 cases. Essential supply chain workers – air and shop crew and hauliers – and accredited diplomats are not required to fill out the form.
Three cases of passengers refusing to complete their passenger locator form have been referred from the Border Management Unit to the Garda National Immigration Bureau, the department said.
However, data released by An Garda Síochána earlier this month shows five people had failed to provide contact tracing details upon arrival at an Irish airport by the end of October.
‘Stay at home’
Speaking on Monday, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney urged people abroad considering flying back to Ireland for Christmas to “ stay at home”.
He told RTÉ radio's Morning Ireland that it was too early to give definitive travel advice for the Christmas period for those intending to book flights. He said Covid-19 case figures for the next two weeks needed to be better for the current social and economic restrictions to have as much impact as possible.
“We need to be cautious here. What we don’t want to do is face a situation where we’re facing a third lockdown in January because we’ve allowed the virus to spread over Christmas.”
Mr Coveney said once a vaccine for Covid-19 was approved by Government, the priority would be to distribute it among the elderly and vulnerable.
However, he cautioned that it was important not to raise expectations on the timeline of when a vaccine would become available.
“We can’t give a timeline until we have an informed view,” he said, adding that focusing on a ‘guesstimate’ of a timeline would not be helpful.
Airport testing, which has already started at Cork and Shannon and is to begin at Dublin this week, will allow Irish travellers to go to regions classified as “orange” under the EU traffic-light system for international travel,
Travellers from “orange” regions will be allowed come into Ireland without restricting their movements as long as they have proof of a negative PCR test that was done no longer than three days before their arrival.
Negative test
The Cabinet has agreed that arrivals from countries with a “red” rating in the EU-wide traffic light system from midnight on November 29th will not have to restrict their movements for the full 14 days if they produce a negative PCR test at least five days after their arrival.
Travellers from “green” regions will not need to restrict their movements when they arrive in another country.
Under the EU traffic light system, the map of green, orange, red and grey regions will be updated every Thursday based on EU epidemiological data and the changes will be applied in Ireland the following Monday.
An Aer Lingus spokeswoman told The Irish Times that while the airline was operating a "much-reduced schedule", some "additional capacity has been added on some key routes such as Dublin-London Heathrow over the Christmas period".
A Ryanair spokeswoman said the airline was operating just 40 per cent of its normal winter schedule this year and that forward bookings into December were "weaker than usual" because of the lockdowns in Ireland and the UK.
She said Ryanair anticipates that “lots of people will still travel home for Christmas, to Ireland and from Ireland, and they will do so taking advantage of the EU ‘Traffic Light’ Scheme rules.
