Sinn Féin’s Darren O’Rourke TD has called on the government to provide more clarity on foreign travel, after the Taoiseach announced travel to certain countries with low levels of Covid-19 will resume from the 9th July.

He said:

“The announcement this evening from the Taoiseach leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

“Country specific travel advice will need to be under constant review to take account of future Covid-19 outbreaks abroad. It is imperative that we are vigilant and that we respond quickly to outbreaks in other countries.

“We cannot have a repeat of the northern Italy situation, where flights continued to land into Ireland despite a huge outbreak in the region, resulting in the importation of the virus. The government needs to outline how they will ensure this will not happen again.

“Consumers also need to be protected and they cannot be left out of pocket should travel restrictions be re-introduced for certain countries. Leaving it to the airlines is simply not good enough.

“Some people have already lost thousands of euro as a result of this, as planes have been permitted to fly but people could not travel due to the government restrictions.

“Stringent measures will need to be put in place in our ports and airports to monitor those arriving back into Ireland as foreign travel resumes.

“We have previously called for temperature screening and highlighted that filling in a form simply isn’t enough. The government needs to urgently address this if they are to open up foreign travel in two weeks’ time.”