Two women arrested after allegedly refusing to enter mandatory hotel quarantine upon arrival in Dublin Airport appeared before Tallaght District Court on Saturday afternoon.
The women have been charged with resisting being detained and brought to a quarantine facility under the Health (Amendment) Act 2021, the legislative basis for the mandatory quarantine regime for people coming from certain designated locations.
In both instances, the judge set bail conditions that included a personal bond of €800 and independent surety of €2,000, and that each woman present herself and reside at a designated quarantine hotel upon taking up bail.
The women, as part of the bail conditions, are to reside at the hotels for 14 days, unless they test negative for Covid-19 after 10 days.
The court heard the women had come from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and had been abroad for cosmetic surgery procedures.
Kirstie McGrath (30) of St Anthony’s Road, Dublin 8, and Niamh Mulreany (25), of Scarlet Row, Essex Street West, Dublin 2, appeared sequentially before Judge Miriam Walsh, who assigned similar bail terms in each case.
When solicitor Michael French, for Ms Mulreany, said his client had been abroad for “breast enhancement or modification”, Judge Walsh said: “colloquially referred to as a boob job”.
The bail applications on behalf of the two women were made by Mr French and responded to by Inspector Luke Lacey, from the Dublin Airport Garda station.
Inspector Lacey said that despite numerous attempts by gardaí at Dublin Airport on Friday to explain to the women the nature of the quarantine legislation and the consequences of not complying, they had refused to do so. Their decisions not to comply were consciously made, he said.
Mr French told the court that Ms McGrath had two young children and Ms Mulreany had one child, and that in both instances the women were their children’s sole carers. Both were living on the lone parent’s allowance.
His client would be willing to quarantine at home, he told the judge when Ms McGrath’s case was before the court.
He said that when the matter came to hearing, his clients would be challenging the constitutionality of the quarantine legislation.
It was, he said during Ms Mulreany’s hearing, disproportionate “to take a woman’s liberty off her for coming into the State and refusing to book into a hotel… There is going to be a child left without her mother.” What was happening was “grossly unfair”.
Inspector Lacey said he was in court because of the seriousness with which the State takes the cases before the court, and the “extraordinary times” that existed.
“The whole purpose of the legislation is to detain people in a quarantine manner to avoid the spread of the disease.”
During Ms McGrath’s hearing, Inspector Lacey said it was important that the integrity of the quarantine legislation was upheld.
If Ms McGrath was to be released on bail without conditions, it would make a “mockery” of the legislation. The State was facing a dangerous situation with new variants of the coronavirus.
During Ms Mulreany’s hearing, Mr French said his client had had three Covid19 tests over the past week, with the first being before her Emirates airline flight from Dublin.
She had taken a second test before trying to board a flight on Wednesday from the United Arab Emirates, but had not been able to board the flight as she “simply did not have” the €2,500 needed to pay in advance for being in quarantine when arriving in Dublin.
Mr French said the flights for her cosmetic surgery were “booked as a present” to his client.
When Mr French said it would be difficult for his client to comply with the bail conditions, and that she was a woman of “little means”, Judge Walsh said this was “a woman who travelled to the United Arab Emirates for cosmetic procedures”.
Inspector Lacey queried the granting of legal aid during the first hearing, given Ms McGrath’s trip abroad for plastic surgery.
However, in both cases the judge granted legal aid. Mr French said his clients would have difficulty complying with the bail conditions on a Saturday afternoon.
Upon conviction, the offence under which the women are charged carries a penalty of a fine of up to €2,000 or one month in jail.
The two cases were adjourned to the April 9th at 10.30am.
