The Social Democrats are calling for an all-island approach to international travel to ensure schools on both sides of the border can open next month.

It comes as the Cabinet prepares to discuss plans to publish a ‘green list’ of countries people can travel to without have to self-isolate for 14 days on their return.

That is despite the Tánaiste breaking ranks on the plans this afternoon and warning that publish the list while also advising against all non-essential international travel would send out “mixed messages.”

On The Hard Shoulder this evening, Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall said Leo Varadkar’s intervention was “peculiar.”

“I don’t know whether there is any mischievousness in this or whether it is because the Taoiseach was abroad for the last few days – but I think the Cabinet need to get their act together,” she said.

The Tánaiste Leo Varadkar arriving at Dublin Castle Dublin for a Cabinet meeting, 15-07-2020. Image: Sam Boal/RollingNews

She said the number of cases in Ireland is on the rise and claimed the actions taken by Government last week will do nothing to reverse the trend.

“What are we actually doing to get the numbers to go down again?” she asked. “Delaying Phase Four is not going to help that.

“It is quite clear in relation to the advice coming from NPHET. They are saying that all measures need to be utilised to discourage non-essential travel from overseas to Ireland. They have expressed concern that there is an increase in imported cases.

“Now I think we can all agree that the priority has to be to open up the schools again in September and the get the domestic economy up and running again. We are only going to be able to do that if we can control the importation of the virus.”

She said mandatory quarantining must be introduced on both sides of the border to allow us to purge the island of the virus.

She said travellers could be released from self-isolation if they passed one test on arrival and another a few days later.

“We do have an advantage in being an island but the fact there are two jurisdictions does complicate things,” she said.

“I am saying we need an all-island approach to this. Just today, [Sinn Féin deputy leader] Michelle O’Neill was calling for that kind of approach.

“There are huge advantages for Northern Ireland and for the Republic to having an all-island approach to this. If you look at what happened in New Zealand where they had those strict controls, they were able then to operate as normal.”

Temple Bar almost empty of Tourists in early March, 10-03-2020. Image: Sam Boal/RollingNews

She noted that Ireland is one of the few countries in the world that is still allowing US tourists to visit – and claimed the system requiring them to self-isolate allows people to “just fill out a form and then travel around the country.”

She said her proposal would discourage people from travelling to Ireland in the first place.

“If you control the importation of the virus then we can open up the country in terms of our domestic economy, our schools and all of that,” she said.

“That is the trade off and in any of this there is a trade-off. You reduce the amount of foreign visitors coming in here but the trade-off to that is that we can operate our domestic economy close to normal.”

You can listen back to the full interview here: