Ireland to move to Level 5 for January

"Authorities in the Republic do not have the legal entitlement to hold a person at Dublin airport indefinitely, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said. "

An update to the emergency legislation will be required to detain, in the meantime the heavy fines should be a significant deterrent.
 
What the travel restrictions are doing is trying to stop the spread of the virus. It is not to stop a person going from A to B to C, and if you are virus free the whole time there is no risk to anyone else from your travels. But the problem is you can have the virus and be unaware you are infecting others.

And it is all about risk management. So say in theory 100K people were planning to come from London to Ireland for Christmas. We were asked not to travel so 70K of those decided not to travel. Either they decided themselves because they have elderly relatives or the mammy got onto them and said please don’t come or whatever. That leaves the 30K who decide to come, and maybe 20K of those did the full 2 weeks of restricted movements before the Christmas dinner, all is good.

Then the last 10K. These are higher risk takers, they have been working away in London, travelling around, meeting less friends and family but still a few and all in all are happier and more comfortable with a bit higher risk than the other 90K. Maybe they are younger, or fitter, or the mam gave them a sob story about having to be home for Christmas. And they travel and sure they only met the mam & dad and ran into a few neighbours and brought gifts home from Mary who they met in London the day they travelled because she was too afraid to come and she wanted her gifts hand deliveries to the granny. And because they are slightly higher risk takers the statistics say that a few of them will have Covid, say 1%. And that 100 spread the B117 variant, and maybe there were just 1 or 2 who went on to be super spreaders. That is all it could have taken to make wave 3 go exponential.

Putting more travel restrictions in place is just trying to reduce the numbers of those higher risk takers. So we end up with only 10 of the 100 travelling and we have to think they are even higher risk because no one can persuade them not to travel and there is no way the Garda can arrest them and they do lots of things to bend and wriggle past the guidelines and regulations. But in my mind they are a serious danger to starting off another wave because they are much less cautious than the general population and take risks.

If we could find and segregate these few people it would be so much easier, but who can tell who they are because there is nothing to make them stand out. This is why the restrictions are crude tools trying to modify the behaviour of a small % of the population.

This is why I worry when I hear of people taking the risk of travelling because the act of travelling in a pandemic signals to me that they are risk takers and I might ultimately end up being infected because of their decisions.
 
You can't.

Going for medical appointments abroad is a valid reason as I stated previously. So I can

Among the reasonable excuses include:

  • to leave the country if not ordinary a resident
  • for work reasons
  • to provide the functions of an elected office holder
  • for educational reasons
  • to attend a medical or dental appointment
  • seek medical assistance for themselves or a vulnerable person
  • to attend to vital family matters (including providing care to vulnerable persons)
  • to attend a funeral
  • to fulfil a legal obligation (such as attend court)
  • child access arrangements

I see at least six points in above list under which I am able to travel personally.
 
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Going for medical appointments abroad is a valid reason as I stated previously. So I can

Yes, you can. At present anyway.

Isn’t that why many travellers to Tenerife have made appointments with a dentist over there, and that dentist is providing a list of “no shows” to the Gardai. The “no shows” will get fined but the others will not.

Last month Leo gave a couple of examples of essential travel reasons which may be changed to non-essential in the coming weeks:
  • Flying to a job interview in London
  • Flying to visit a terminally ill friend/relative

As with many Covid matters, why applies today may not apply next week.

As an aside, I do wonder about the grey area of essential travel taking in non-essential travel.
If I go visit my mother’s grave (50km away) is it OK to go for a walk in the woods adjacent to the graveyard, or to stop in the butchers in the local town?
 
Doing groceries is not restricted by the 5km rule. And for the walk in the woods one might have got lost on the way to the butcher....

But medical tourism is quite normal as the quality, waiting time and prices are often enough horrendous in Ireland...

Will be difficult if not impossible to stop that - and yes if someone doesn't get anything done that the person should be fined obviously.
 
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A (reliable) little birdie told me:
Junior infants and senior infants will return to school on Monday 1st March.
 
The current Level 5 restrictions are set to remain in place until May. 2021, I hope.
The schools need to reopen. The impact on children's lives will, for many, be life long.
We have a long history in this country of putting children's needs last. I thought that had changed in recent years. It seems I was wrong.
 
Special needs schools re-opened this week. Special needs children in other schools return on Monday.
Junior infants, senior infants, first class and second class return on Monday 1st March.
Further children return on 22nd March.

Not sure when leaving certificate children return.
 
If children return on 22nd March for 1 week before a 2 week break for Easter, the teachers will really be taking the proverbial! And before anyone says it, I know that is exactly what they will do anyway. I'm sure most parents would sacrifice a week break before then (this week would have made perfect sense) in order to reduce the Easter break by a week. But of course the teachers unions won't entertain such notions. As Purple said, children are not being put first in the thoughts of these unions.
 
My daughter is in senior infants. She has one 30minute remote class on Zoom per week from her teacher. We’re considering keeping her back come September but I dunno if that’s done nowadays.
 
My daughter is in senior infants. She has one 30minute remote class on Zoom per week from her teacher. We’re considering keeping her back come September but I dunno if that’s done nowadays.
Not trying to tell you how to raise your family but you might think hard about that, little girls want to be with their friends and not left behind.
Anyway girls seem to catch up quicker too
 
We’ve considered that. And her friends parents are thinking of keeping their girls back too!

Junior and senior infants combined amounts to approximately 17 months in school.

These children will have 12 months maximum. That’s a deficit of 30%. And the regression has been obvious in my daughters case.

My son is a year older and the regression hasn’t been too apparent.

Anyway, this is a debate for a separate thread. If they go back on 1st March and remain in class ‘til end of June things should get back on track.
 
RTE news reporting that:
Cabinet has formally agreed that #level5 restrictions will remain in place until April 5th. Sense in cabinet that any easing of restrictions after that will not be far reaching - could include meeting outdoors, lifting of 5km limit and construction - but far from guaranteed
 
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