Workers from Northern Ireland are crossing the border in their thousands every day to work in the Republic, despite strict travel restrictions here.
The Mail on Sunday witnessed dozens of cars with Northern Ireland plates parked on the side of motorway slip roads and on dual carriageways on the southern side of the border, last week.
One person, who appeared to be a construction worker, was seen parking his car and then getting into a minibus that headed south.
Others parked up their vehicles for the day before carpooling and continuing onwards to Dublin.
It comes as Jack Lambert, consultant in infectious disease at the Mater and Rotunda Hospitals, warned that the Republic needs ‘effective’ Covid checkpoints.
‘There are thousands of people coming here every day from the North, getting into buses and cars together, mixing family groups,’ he says. ‘I don’t know if they’re wearing masks in the vehicles but at that distance, they may not be effective.
‘But they’re travelling south and they’re mixing with the community. People say where does this mysterious community transmission come in from in many positive cases, well this is one answer.
‘I know this is going on, the Government know it’s going on but no action is taken. Instead of having a tier 5 lockdown, the Government would do better to look at this kind of behaviour, put checkpoints on the border and stop this traffic.
‘I am calling on the Government to come up with some kind of comprehensive plan for how we screen for Covid at ports, airports and our borders.’
Northern Ireland has one of the highest rates of Covid-19 infection in Europe. The seven-day infection rate per 100,000 is now 332.4, compared with a 14-day incidence rate of 292 in the Republic.
The Derry City and Strabane council district remains worst-hit with an incidence rate of 1,141.3 cases per 100,000 people over the last 14 days. At one stage it had the highest infection rate in the UK.
At a Garda checkpoint on the border south of Newry last week, the MoS witnessed four young men in a Northern-registered car being stopped by a garda. He asked them where they were going, they replied Dublin.
The garda asked them if they were aware that ‘the Republic was in lockdown’. They said they were and he waved them on. The MoS understands that three cars – out of thousands – were turned back up to that mid-afternoon point.
A source told the MoS: ‘If people want to go, then we can’t stop them.’
Fianna Fáil councillor for Dundalk, Seán Kelly, says that there are between three and four hundred cars parked every day on roads adjoining the motorways in north Louth.
He says many of the occupants come from the North and carpool from there to Dublin.
‘It’s gotten that we have so many cars, that the council is actually going to build a 500-space car park for them south of the town.’
Asked what he thought of the public health implications, he said that ‘rates of the disease are high on both sides of the border’.
‘We don’t want to create a “them and us” situation. We’ve had very high rates of Covid in the Dundalk area as well but we’re getting on top of it now.’
Northern Ireland has no specific travel advice for residents travelling to the Republic.
Last month, acting chief medical officer Dr Ronan Glynn and his Northern counterpart Dr Michael McBride appealed for people to avoid unnecessary travel across the border.
Since the Republic’s six-week national lockdown began last Wednesday week, gardaí have been given new powers to prosecute people making non-essential journeys, with fines of up to €2,500 and jail for up to six months.
— to extra.ie
