More than 6,000 people arrived into Dublin Airport last week from countries that experts want added to Ireland's hotel quarantine list.
While 6,020 arrived into the country's busiest transport hub, a further 223 arrived into Cork and Shannon airports.
The figure has emerged in a list released by the Department of Transport of the number of people who arrived into the country between March 29 and April 4.
Among the countries that were recommended to be added to the quarantine list were the USA, France, Germany, Italy and 13 other EU states including Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Estonia.
The recommendation came from the Expert Travel Advisory Group but they were not added to the list due to concerns from the Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney.
A meeting to add more countries to the list is expected to take place between Government ministers this evening.
Among the top five countries for arrivals:
- 1,300 arrived from France
- 940 from Poland
- 735 from the USA
- 707 from Germany
- 288 from Hungary
Other arrivals included Italy (245), Sweden (158) and Latvia (138).
It is expected that the majority of the countries will be added to the mandatory hotel quarantine list in the coming days. There are currently 58 countries on the list of high-risk countries.
Speaking on RTE Prime Time, Minister Donnelly said: "The advice we have that is of concern to me and to other colleagues is the variant-of-concern countries.
“The point of mandatory hotel quarantining - we only want this to be a short term thing for a few months - the core function of it is to stop people from coming into the country from these countries”.
For the latest news and breaking news visit dublinlive.ie/news.
Get all the big headlines, pictures, analysis, opinion and video on the stories that matter to you.
Follow us on Twitter @DublinLive - the official Dublin Live Twitter account - real news in real time.
We're also on Facebook/dublinliveonline - your must-see news, features, videos and pictures throughout the day from the capital.
