Health Minister says he has confident in new system of mandatory hotel quarantine

The Health Minister has said he's confident the new system of mandatory hotel quarantine is strong enough to prevent people getting around the rules. 

The first bookings have been made for the system which comes into place on Friday.

Passengers who need to quarantine will be met off the plane by officials who will process them in a bubble through customs before they're handed to the defence forces for transport to hotels.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly believes there are measures in place to catch people who try to get around the rules by getting connecting flights through other countries: "What I'm confident is that the professionals we have in the airports, the border management unit, whose job this is, I'm confident that they're highly professional, and that they will be minimising the risk I don't think anyone would ever say that you can completely eliminate the risk, but they are highly professional they know what they're doing, they're well prepared, and they will be minimising those risks."