The Government is to decide in the next week whether to ditch quarantine requirements for travellers who enter the country for essential work or family reasons from the rest of the European Union.
Ireland agreed with other EU states to back an agreement that included a broad list of people who would be exempt from quarantine requirements, including anyone travelling for "imperative family or business reasons" within the bloc on Tuesday.
The list is part of an EU agreement brokered in an attempt to bring travel rules into line and keep freedom of movement functioning across the bloc, but each member state has to power to decide whether to enact it or not.
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"The Government has agreed in principle to adopt the recommendations, but the modalities of how it does that will be finalised in the next week," Minister for European Affairs Thomas Byrne told the Irish Times, with what to classify as essential travel "still under discussion".
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Ireland has one of the highest percentages of citizens living outside the state of any developed country, but has maintained a blanket two-week quarantine requirement for incoming travel throughout the pandemic apart from a green list of countries – a stricter policy than most of the EU.
As the agreement was announced, European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders said it was essential to "ensure families and loved ones can visit each other".
“For the millions of citizens with an essential reason to travel, be it for important family reasons such as a funeral or to visit a sick relative, but also for cross-border family members travelling on a regular basis, or those travelling for work ... today’s agreement is a welcome improvement to a currently precarious situation. No quarantine would be applied in these cases,” Mr Reynders said.
But he noted that “today’s agreement is only the first step, it’s now crucial for member states to implement today’s agreement.”
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The agreement means that as of next week, Ireland will join the rest of the bloc in following a colour-coded risk map drawn up by European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) that categorises regions across Europe as green, orange, or red.
All those arriving from green regions will be exempt from any travel restrictions such as quarantine or testing requirements, but the Government has yet to decide what requirements will be set for travellers from orange and red regions.
Due to the resurgence of Covid-19 infections across the continent, only one region in Italy, parts of the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, parts of Bulgaria and most of eastern Germany currently qualify as green.
Regions are classified as green if they have Covid-19 infection levels of under 25 per 100,000 people over a two-week period, with fewer than 4 percent of tests coming back positive. Above this, regions are classified as orange; or red if infections are more than 150 per 100,000 people.
Any region with more than 50 cases per 100,000 people is also classified as red if more than 4 per cent of tests are coming back positive.
Northern Ireland, much of northern England, large parts of France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and almost all of Czechia are currently “red” on the ECDC’s map.
The European Commission had initially proposed that all quarantine requirements be dropped across the bloc, and replaced by mandatory testing for travellers from red areas and recommended testing for those from orange areas – a change favoured by the airline industry.
But member states rejected this, instead opting to choose their own restrictions and continue with quarantines, which differ in length from country to country, arguing that each state has different circumstances such as testing capacity.
Powers over border and health matters are solely in the hands of national governments, meaning that while the European Commission can issue advice and try to broker coordination, it is ultimately up to member states to set their own policy in these areas.
