Taoiseach Micheál Martin announcing the easing of Covid restrictions last night
Fluffybiscuits writes:
Inter county travel is to be lifted from May 10. When Northern Ireland returns to normal along with rest of UK, does the fact we have no border not mean the government’s hands here are forced to match those measures? Monitoring compliance for people traversing the border would be impossible
Anyone?
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You need to define ‘returns to normal’, as this is subjective.
Also, there is already a border between North and South, considered a porous one. So is the question here on whether this is now to be policed?
The NI hospitality sector is already open for outdoors, and will be open indoors with measures like ours last summer from May 24th. That alone should guarantee a steady stream of people heading up while ours is still closed down.
NI will also presumably move to fully open society, with no restrictions, at most a week or two behind England – as they’ve done with outdoor hospitality and indoor to date. Which would mean mid/late June. At that stage it’ll be full nightclubs, festivals, sports games going on up there, while down here we still won’t be able to even eat/drink indoors in restaurants…
Thats either going to lead to massive numbers of people heading North every weekend, or our government here copping themselves on a bit and speeding up the reopening process.
Can you go up the North after the 10th of May does anyone know?
Somewhere across the internet Tony H is quoted as saying that once inter-county travel resumes, NPHET “will not be advising people not to travel” to NI.
People have been freely crossing the border all along so I’m not sure if this makes any difference in that regard. However I do think the relaxation in the North has applied pressure down here as it was obviously going to be held up as a counterpoint to how well the politicians down here have been doing.