Let's not demonise young people
The handling of weekend crowds by Dublin City Council has been slammed as mismanagement by a local city councillor.
Independent councillor Mannix Flynn defended those who took part, while a senior HSE official meanwhile said the scenes of large crowds gathering over the weekend looked like “V-Day celebrations”.
HSE chief clinical officer Dr Colm Henry warned the gatherings could “exploit our weakest position” with large groups of unvaccinated people coming together.
Cllr Flynn separately cautioned against the demonisation of younger people congregating.
“The event that took place was mismanaged, you have a pedestrian zone in Dublin City, created by Dublin City Council, where they created these pedestrian zones and then walked away and didn’t manage them,” he said.
“I mean this is a normal Saturday trading day and droves of young people and all sorts of people moved into this area, sat down and had picnics and very quickly became, I suppose besodden with alcohol.
“That’s the big kind of factor here, alcohol. And then it got more and more and more boisterous.
“This was being monitored all day by An Garda Síochána, and then late into the evening when it became too much to manage they moved in the public order unit, and moved people on.
“Let’s not demonise the young people, and let’s manage this properly.”
Vaccine registration to open for ages 40 to 44
Ireland's Covid-19 vaccine registration portal will begin to open for those aged 40 to 44 from Wednesday.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly confirmed that online registration will commence this week for the age group in a post on Twitter.
He said those aged 44 will be able to register on June 2nd, while those aged 43 can do so on June 3rd. The portal will open to those a year younger on each subsequent day.
Overseas travel in April four times higher than last year
Overseas travel for the month of April was almost four times higher than the same month last year, new CSO figures show.
April 2021 saw 69,400 overseas passenger arrivals and 73,000 departures, compared with 16,100 arrivals and 17,800 departures in the same month last year.
Overseas travel significantly increased in April compared with March this year, with the number of arrivals up 13.1 per cent from 61,400 and departures up 9.8 per cent from 66,500.
However, for every overseas traveller in April 2021, there were 24 in pre-pandemic April 2019, when there were 1,712,900 arrivals and 1,736,400 departures.
That represents a drop of 95.9 per cent and 95.8 per cent respectively.
