Phase 2 Easing of Ireland’s Lockdown Restrictions – Amendments

Oran Doyle, Trinity College Dublin

 

On 13 June 2020, the Minister for Health made SI 209/2020 Health Act 1947 (Section 31A -Temporary Restrictions) (Covid-19) (No.2) (Amendment) Regulations 2020. Notification of the making of these Regulations was given in Iris Oifigiúil on 16 June 2020.  These make a small number of amendments to the Phase 2 Regulations that I analysed here. The Observatory has posted a new consolidation of the Regulations here.

This phrase of restrictions is structured around three prohibitions: the restriction of movement for exercise, social, or recreational purposes; the restriction of events; the restriction of public access to certain businesses or services. The most significant change in these amendments concerns this last category. Occupiers and managers of all retail outlets are no longer prohibited from allowing access to the public. For the week from 8 to 15 June, this prohibition had applied to some retail outlets but not others.

There are a few minor changes in relation to sporting facilities. Outdoor gymnasiums may now be made accessible to the public. Indoor gymnasiums remain closed to the public, but may be opened insofar as necessary for the training of elite sportspeople and athletes. Sports stadiums, campuses, sports training facilities may now additionally be accessible to the public where they are available free of charge for informal and recreational use by members of the public and where their operation is necessary for the purposes of an outdoor sporting or recreational event in accordance with regulation 6 (i.e. with a maximum of 15 people).

The Department of Health has now helpfully established a website that gathers together statutory instruments related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This appears to solve the issue, previously raised in this blog and elsewhere, of the time lag between regulations coming into legal effect and being published.

The website also produces a helpful explanation of what the Regulations do. It is always difficult to provide a brief synopsis of the law in language that is both correct and accessible to lay people. However, some aspects of the explanation may be misleading. For instance, the website states:

We can travel within a 20 kilometre radius of our homes or anywhere within our county for social and recreational purposes. This includes travel and leisure.

We can gather for social or recreational purposes in other people’s homes, subject to a maximum of 6 people at such a gathering.

We can exercise outdoors with others or gather outdoors with others for social and recreational purposes, subject to a maximum of 15 people.

People may travel outside of these geographical limits for visits to vulnerable persons.

A casual reader might glean from this guide that the key movement restriction in the Regulations is the distance limit:  you may travel 20km or within your own county if it is for social or recreational purposes, but further travel is permitted to visit a vulnerable person. Such a reading would be incorrect, however. The key restriction in the Regulations is on movement for social or recreational purposes. In those circumstances, the distance restrictions apply. But if you are travelling for any other purposes—work, shopping, politics, religion, protest, educational, cultural, etc—no distance limits apply.

In a previous post, I discussed the rule of law issues that arose from vague criminal offences in the original lockdown restrictions. A different but related rule of law concern arises from official guidance that, however unintentionally, may lead people to believe that they are subject to more onerous legal restrictions than is actually the case. In the midst of the pandemic, there are sound public health reasons to encourage people not to exercise the full freedom of movement permitted to them by law. But it would be preferable to be clear about the boundary between legal prohibition and advice.

 

Oran Doyle is professor in law at Trinity College Dublin and a visiting faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. He is the Director of the COVID-19 Law and Human Rights Observatory.

Suggested citation: Oran Doyle, 'Phase 2 Easing of Ireland’s Lockdown Restrictions – Amendments' (17 June 2020) http://tcdlaw.blogspot.com/2020/06/phase-2-easing-of-irelands-lockdown_17.html

Return to home page of the COVID-19 Law and Human Rights Observatory.

 

The information provided in this document is not legal advice or professional advice of any other kind, and should not be considered to be such, or relied or acted upon in that regard. If you need legal or other professional advice, you should consult a suitably qualified person.