Ireland urges its citizens in Spain to return home

Ireland urged thousands of its holidaymakers to return home from Spain by Thursday, as the escalating coronavirus pandemic prompted Dublin to order pubs and hotel bars to shut in a bid to hold back the disease. As 40 new infections on Sunday brought the total in Ireland to 169, the government said as many as 25,000 Irish tourists in Spain should return home within four days after Madrid imposed a country-wide lockdown. “After Thursday I think it may be difficult to provide any guarantees that people will be able to get home easily,” Simon Coveney, deputy premier, told national television.
“What I’m saying to people very directly is that you should plan to come home regardless of how long your holiday was supposed to be.” The closure of bars from Sunday night — before the St Patrick’s Day national holiday on Tuesday — came after social media showed weekend revellers crammed into pubs in defiance of government demands to limit mass gatherings to less than 100 people. A statement from the office of prime minister Leo Varadkar said: “While the government acknowledges that the majority of the public and pub owners are behaving responsibly, it believes it is important that all pubs are closed in advance of St Patrick’s Day.” Mr Varadkar warned earlier on Sunday that he may seek new “enforcement powers” from parliament to curtail large gatherings in bars.