Cianan Brennan
The level of airborne passenger traffic into and out of Ireland dropped dramatically from already historically low levels with the imposition of the level 5 Covid-19 lockdown, new figures show.
Just 25,239 people arrived into Ireland by air during the week beginning October 19, in which the latest six-week restrictions were imposed, a 61.4% reduction on the 65,418 passengers who landed here during the week beginning August 3, according to a series of parliamentary question answers delivered to Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy.
At Cork Airport, the number of arrivals sank even lower, with just 1,501 people arriving during the week of lockdown from just five places of origin — the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK.
The figures for Shannon Airport were even lower still — just 505 people arrived into Ireland at the Clare airport during the week the new restrictions were introduced.
At Dublin Airport more than a quarter, 6,407, of the arrivals during the week of lockdown were from the UK.
Arrivals from the USA meanwhile were down 60% to just 543.
The Czech Republic and Finland comprised two countries which had been previously delivering passengers to Dublin whose total for the week fell to zero.
The fallout from lockdown was put in stark terms before the Oireachtas transport committee last week by the heads of Ireland’s three major airports — with Cork alone set to make a €20m loss for 2020.
Departures
In terms of departures, meanwhile, the slump was very similar to that of incoming passengers.
Some 29,519 people left Irish airports for international destinations in the week of October 21, down 53% from the 62,466 seen at the beginning of August.
Of that figure 8,534 were bound for the UK, and 792 for the US.
All told 166 of those travellers were bound for destinations elsewhere in Ireland.
Meanwhile, one destination saw an almost doubling in passengers in the two months leading up to Ireland’s second lockdown — Qatar, which recorded 186 departures between October 19 and 25.
Cork departures fell by 61% to 1,677 at the beginning of lockdown, to the same five destinations that passengers were received from.
Traffic in and out of the country’s sea ports meanwhile fell by 68%, down to just 8,462.
Some 389,216 passenger locator forms were submitted meanwhile between the beginning of September and end of October.
Said forms are used for the purposes of contact tracing and to allow for targeted public health advertisements directed at incoming travellers.
Yesterday it emerged that visitors to Ireland from orange countries, under the EU’s traffic light travel system for Covid-19, will not have to quarantine from this Sunday, November 8, once they can provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test.
