FROM TODAY, ALL passengers arriving into Ireland regardless of their origin can end their movement restriction after five days if they receive a negative Covid-19 test. 

The change comes as Ireland continues to adapt its travel restrictions in line with the EU’s traffic light approach. 

Before today and besides some specific exceptions, people arriving into Ireland from orange, red or grey countries were required to restrict their movements for 14 days. 

This is now to change and people arriving from those countries can end their movement restriction if they receive a ‘negative/not detected’ PCR test that was taken at least five days after arrival. 

While the traffic light system relates to EEA members, countries that fall outside of that are considered to be the same as red/grey regions so five-day rule also applies. 

People arriving from orange countries are not required to restrict their movements in Ireland if they had a negative PCR test in the three days before they arrived into the country. There are also a number of three other categories of people who are exempt from the requirements, including children under six. 

For those who will be requiring a test five days after their arrival, they are being asked to schedule one in advance of arriving in Ireland. 

Covid-19 testing centre in Dublin Airport. Source: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

At Dublin Airport, there are two testing facilities being run by Randox and RocDoc that have the option of a drive-through test or a walk-in test.

Between them, the two providers have testing capacity of more than 12,000 tests per day if needed and this will shortly be expanded to 15,000. 

People can take a test from other providers but in all cases the government says that people should wait for a negative test result to be returned before ending the period of restricted movements.

All passengers arriving to Ireland from overseas are still required to complete a Covid-19 Passenger Locator Form.

Speaking on Friday, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said “there is no ban on international travel or people coming home” to Ireland but that the government is asking people not to make a journey here if they don’t think it is essential.