Almost 6,000 air passengers are flying into Ireland every day, with nearly a third of arrivals travelling from the UK, latest official figures disclose.
While numbers are dramatically lower than normal for the time of year, there has been a steady increase over recent weeks in visitors arriving through Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports.
In the week July 13th to July 19th, at least 36, 931 passengers touched down at Dublin Airport, from 35 different countries, including the UK (10,743), Spain (4,965), France (2,137) and the Netherlands (2,041).
Some 1,122 passengers arrived from the US at Dublin Airport during the period.
The overall number of arrivals was up almost 30 per cent from the previous week (28,603) and up nearly 60 per cent on the preceding week (23,156), when more flights were put on at the beginning of the month.
The numbers only cover those who are visiting Ireland and do not include other passengers who are transferring through Dublin onto onward flights.
During the same week, some 2,846 passengers arrived at Cork Airport –- more than half (1,566) from the UK, with Spain (450), Poland (363) and France (120) the next most popular departure countries. Overall weekly arrival numbers at Cork have increased almost 65 per cent since the first week of the month (1,731).
At Shannon Airport, weekly passenger numbers jumped more than 80 per cent over the same time period, from 836 to 1,522. Again, the UK (772) accounted for the largest number of arrivals, followed by Spain (332), Poland (238) and Lithuania (70).
Parliamentary question
The figures were released by Minister for Transport Tourism and Sport Eamon Ryan in response to a parliamentary question by Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae.
Mr Ryan said State airports remained open during the Covid-19 crisis “to ensure critical supply chains have been able to remain operational, and citizens have been able to return home”.
He was unable to provide a breakdown of the arrivals into Ireland by those who were returning home and those who were foreign visitors.
“While our three State airports have seen some increases in operations since more passenger flights resumed on the first of July, passenger numbers still remain low,” he said. At Dublin Airport, nine million passengers are expected in 2020 (compared to over 32 million passengers in 2019).
He said numbers at both Cork and Shannon were down by about 90 per cent over the same time last year.
Mr Ryan was also unable to detail the original departure countries of nearly 14,000 passengers who arrived in Ireland through sea ports in recent weeks.
Between June 29th and July 12th, some 10,046 passengers disembarked ferries from the UK at Dublin Port. Another 2,264 arrived at Rosslare from the UK, while 1,483 visitors got off ferries from Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Spain at either Rosslare or Cork.
Last week, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney suggested further travel restrictions could be introduced for visitors arriving from Covid-19 “hot spots”.
Currently, visitors from all but 15 European countries and territories on the so-called “green list” published earlier this month only have to fill out a passenger locator form and agree to spend 14 days in quarantine at a confirmed address on arriving in Ireland.
