Stena Line appeals for passengers to adhere to guidelines and restrict travel to essential journeys

As the Government continues to warn people against travelling to holiday homes this weekend, Dublin Port has seen a dramatic drop in car and foot passengers.
Stena Line appeals for passengers to adhere to guidelines and restrict travel to essential journeys

- Additional reporting by Vivienne Clark

As the Government continues to warn people against travelling to holiday homes this weekend, Dublin Port has seen a dramatic drop in car and foot passengers.

Simon Palmer, communications manager for Stena Line, said on a normal bank holiday weekend they would have thousands of passengers.

The ferry operator runs passenger services between Liverpool and Belfast, Fishguard and Rosslare and Holyhead and Dublin.

It comes as a former regional director of public health in England, Dr Gabriel Scally, said that, if reports of UK-registered cars coming off ferries into Ireland to go to holiday homes are true, it “needs to stop”.

Mr Palmer said: "There's a huge reduction, we are now concentrating on the freight that is keeping the vital supply lines open.

"People can still travel on our ferries, but we are asking people to adhere to Government guidelines and only travel for essential purposes.

"So if here is an emergency and they need to travel we are there for them."

The ferry operator's Irish and North Sea routes continue to operate as normal and they have introduced safety measures to counteract the spread of Covid-19.

    The latest restrictions in operation since Friday, March 27 mandate that everyone should stay at home, only leaving to:
  • Shop for essential food and household goods;
  • Attend medical appointments, collect medicine or other health products;
  • Care for children, older people or other vulnerable people - this excludes social family visits;
  • Exercise outdoors - within 2kms of your home and only with members of your own household, keeping 2 metres distance between you and other people
  • Travel to work if you provide an essential service - be sure to practice social distancing

Dr Gabriel Scally said the reported flow of UK-registered cars from ferries into Ireland "needs to stop” as the UK has no community testing for Covid-19.

The author of the report into the CervicalCheck controversy told RTE radio’s Today with Séan O’Rourke show that there cannot be any lifting of restrictions in either the North or the South of Ireland unless it is done in harmony

“It has to be hand in hand.”

Dr Scally said that there was a “delicate balancing act” with regard to restrictions and that there will be pressure on politicians to lift restrictions once the number of deaths begins to fall off.

“All eyes will be on the death toll. If that drops off the pressure will be on to withdraw restrictions.

What’s important is how active the virus is in the community. Where the clusters are?

However, he warned that a key issue would be “imported cases”. The experience in China had been that there were no longer domestic cases, but they were still importing cases. “We wouldn’t want that to happen.”

There will never be enough testing to do it on demand, he said. Ideally anyone arriving in the country would be swabbed and asked where they were coming from, where they’ve been and where they’re going to.

If they were found to be unwell they should be quarantined in a facility close to the airport or the port. “It has to be like that,” said Dr Scally.

If someone who was a “super spreader” came into the country “then the whole thing could run away from us again,” he said.

Dr Scally also warned that there would have to be different work patterns when the country goes back to work. There cannot be “huge packs” of people “crammed” on public transport.

Alan Barrett of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) further warned that any delay in the lifting of restrictions will damage the economy with more businesses closing down and others going into insolvency.

“It is an incredibly difficult situation, how to balance public health and the economy.

“There is no easy solution to this.”

Any delay in the lifting of restrictions will be catastrophic to the economy, he said.

“Politicians will have to do a delicate balancing act and make unpalatable decisions. The biggest challenge will be the balancing of public health and economic demands.”

This story has been amended

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