Irish stranded in Peru to be brought home on charter flight

The Government has announced a flight to bring home more than 100 Irish people stranded in Peru.

Tánaiste Simon Coveney said an agreement has been reached between British Airways and Aer Lingus to charter a flight.

“Between British Airways and Aer Lingus, we now have an agreement to charter a BA plane, to send it to Lima,” he told RTÉ’s This Week.

Mr Coveney said there are 135 Irish citizens in Peru, most of them are backpackers, but they are spread out in different parts across the country.

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“ We will need to try to get all of those Irish citizens to Lima in the next few days. And then picked up by a charter flight which we now have an agreement on and again, I say in particular Aer Lingus, and their management team have been hugely helpful here. And we now have an agreement to send a charter flight.”

Mr Coveney said that he hopes to have the charter flight to Lima organised in the next few days.

“But we’re going to need those few days to get to those that aren’t in Lima. Sixty or seventy of the 135 are in Lima, the others will need to travel to get there to get on this charter flight and hopefully that will happen before the middle of the week.”

Mr Coveney said those availing of the flight will not have to pay large sums of money to get home.

"What the European Commission have said now is that if EU citizens are coming back to the EU from parts of the world, we should be able to claim back from the European Union up to 70 per cent of the cost of our flights."

Mr Coveney said the cost of chartering the flight from Ireland to Lima will cost the State about €300,000, the majority of which will be eligible to be claimed back.

“Believe me, trying to put in place this rescue flight if you want to call it that, in Peru is not straightforward at the moment,” he said . It is a country that is in lockdown that has effectively shut down airspace. And so this will require negotiation, as well as a willingness by an airline to fly in and pick up our people, but I think we’re in a good place there to get that done.”