Conor Power SC for the women said that the measures requiring his clients to enter mandatory quarantine breached their constitutional rights to liberty and amount to civil preventative detention of large numbers of people. The mandatory quarantine for people arriving into Ireland from certain designated countries, are also disproportionate, and “most severe” counsel said. It was unprecedented in the history of the State, counsel said adding that the challenge was not about the State’s right to act in the face of the pandemic. One of the applicants Mr Power SC is representing is 52-year-old South African native, and Irish resident Charlene Heyns. She also said that the last thing she wanted was that in the summer there would be huge outbreaks of the South African variant here, against which vaccines would not work.

Source: The Irish Times April 16, 2021 21:45 UTC