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Mandatory quarantine for passengers arriving in the State from a list of countries could be operational within a week following the signing of the required legislation into law.

President Michael D Higgins on Sunday signed into law the Health (Amendment) Act 2021 which will allow the State to require passengers arriving from 20 named countries with a high incidence of Covid-19 to quarantine for 14 days in a designated hotel.

The contract with the hotel provider which will run the service is expected to be signed on Wednesday, paving the way for the system to begin operations within a matter of days.

The City West hotel complex in Dublin, which the Government leased as an emergency facility last year, has been mentioned as the main designated facility, but the Government has not confirmed this.

“The next step in this process is to finalise and sign a contract with a service provider. I anticipate this will happen shortly,” said Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.

He said the priority now was to make the law operational.

 

Planning permission for the 70,000 capacity festival in Stradbally, Co Laois has been rolled over from last year and 95 per cent of those who bought tickets for last year’s cancelled event have retained their tickets for this year.

Brian McDermott, one of the organisers of Electric Picnic, said the festival will go ahead “unless the Government tells us otherwise” and it should be followed by the National Ploughing Championships later in the month of September.

New guidelines for minor personal injury claims, which will reduce awards by around a half, will not go far enough to bring insurance costs down, business groups have said.

The Irish Hotels Federation  said reductions of at least 80% were required to bring Ireland back to international norms. The Federation said more resources must be given to gardaí to address the serious issue of insurance fraud.

The new guidelines, drawn up by the Judicial Council, will be brought by the Justice Minister to Cabinet on Tuesday for implementation “as soon as possible”.

The Tánaiste Leo Vardakar said the new guidelines were a “really important step in the right direction” while Justice Minister Helen McEntee said she hoped the new guidelines would “bring consistency, reduce litigation and reduce awards”, which were a major driver of insurance costs.

 

British food delivery firm Deliveroo has announced plans for its London listing , disclosing it had narrowed its underlying loss in 2020 to £223.7 millionThe Deliveroo IPO is one of the most eagerly watched-for initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first half of 2021, and is expected to value the company at more than $7 billion.

 

In a trading update alongside its IPO circular, the company said it had grown the total number of transactions processed on its online platform, the so-called Gross Transaction Value, by 64.3 per cent last year to £4.1 billion from £2.5 billion in 2019.

Over the same period, underlying gross profit rose 89.5 per cent to £357.5 million from £188.7 million, pushing underlying gross profit as a percentage of GTV to 8.8 per cent from 7.6 per cent.

The total underlying loss for the year came in at £223.7 million, down from £317.3 million in 2019, it added. As flagged last week, the company said it planned to use a dual-class share structure that will give co-founder Will Shu more control over the company.