Government’s manoeuvres would do credit to the Suez

World of Politics with Harry McGee

Last week we saw two spectacular manoeuvres within government that would make the refloating of a jammed 400 metre cargo ship on the Suez Canal look fairly routine. The first was a revised vaccine programme – followed quickly by a dramatic adjustment of the mandatory hotel quarantine programme.

There is a concept in law that is quite useful in politics too and that is foreseeability – and the circumstances that brought the changes in both situations were entirely foreseeable for months.

When the travel advisory group of NPHET added 43 countries to the list of mandatory hotel quarantine, it led to the Government taking the highly unusual course of more or less disowning its own legislation that was hardly a month old.

The reason was that the list included 17 EU States and also the USA. Among the European countries were France, Italy and Germany; so all passengers coming from those countries would be subject to mandatory hotel quarantine.

Within two days all 17 EU countries were removed – for reasons that might be valid and fully justified in the eyes of the Ministers, but they had nothing to do with the Health (Amendment) Act 2021.

Poor Austria, which has been on the list since mid-March, was left there, the sole remaining EU country in the naughty corner.

Simon Coveney used a disingenuous argument when he seemed to suggest that law was never intended to capture countries where many Irish people lived.

He told Highland Radio: “Take France for example; there are 20,000 Irish people in France. Many come home from the summer, a lot are students.

“Is it reasonable if those people have tested negative or have been vaccinated or recovered from Covid; is it reasonable to put them in a hotel if they have a home to go to where they could be quarantined?”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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