TAOISEACH MICHEAL MARTIN has admitted that it's impossible to enforce mandatory quarantine for people arriving in Ireland.
Current rules state that if you're travelling into Ireland from a country not on the official 'green list', then you must have restricted movement for 14 days.
You also need to supply the address at which you'll be staying so the government can make sure you're adhering to the rules.
Despite this, Martin says that making sure these rules are being kept is infeasible task.
"In terms of the mandatory quarantine, this has been articulated for quite some time. It is impossible to enforce in the first instance," Martin told the Dáil on Wednesday.
"Secondly, it is questionable as to whether it works well. In some countries they have brought in mandatory quarantining and it led to a cluster where the actual quarantining was taking place.
"That happened and the advice we have got and discussed with the WHO (World Health Organisation) and others really is that you must be able to contact people very quickly once they come into the country."
On Tuesday, Ireland published its official 'green list', which listed 15 countries people were allowed to travel to without having to quarantine upon return.
However, the likes of the UK and the US weren't included, and with hundreds of people from America arriving in Ireland everyday, there are fears the rules will be thrown out the window.
The Taoiseach added that if people return from countries that are not on the green list and they do not restrict their movements it could risk schools not being able to reopen in September.
"Anyone who travels outside of those 15 countries that we have identified should restrict their movements when they return to Ireland without question.
"In our view, we don’t want families going on holidays to those countries in the first place. It is very important they don’t risk the capacity of schools to open or indeed create situations that could lead to the spread of the virus."
