More than 34,000 people arrived in Ireland in the three-week period after the Government signed-off on its hotel quarantine plan.
That includes over 1,200 passengers from 'high risk' countries such as South Africa and Brazil, according to the Sunday Independent.
The most popular reason given for flying into the country between February 22nd and last Sunday was a holiday or visit.
The new quarantine system, which is expected to begin next week, will require arrivals from 33 countries to stay in a designated facility for two weeks.
People arriving from those nations must self-quarantine for a full 14 days, while those arriving from other countries can stop quarantining sooner if they receive a negative PCR test result five days after their arrival here.
Under the new legislation, anyone who does not adhere to the rules will be fined €4,000 and face a possible month in prison.
President Michael D Higgins signed the legislation for mandatory hotel quarantine into law two weeks ago, but Cabinet agreed to the plans more than a month ago.
Speaking to Newstalk Breakfast with Susan Keogh, Sunday Independent political correspondent Hugh O'Connell said most travellers are coming to Ireland for non-essential reasons.
"The top reason that some of these people are giving for coming into the state is for a holiday or visit," he explained.
"That is enormously frustrating for the general public I think when we know one of the ways, or probably the way, the virus got into the country was through travel.
"We know that the new variants coming into this country are linked to travel as well."
'Not good enough'
Labour Party leader Alan Kelly believes the lack of urgency from the Government in getting the system up and running is worrying.
"NPHET asked for this last May, it's quite frankly ridiculous at this stage that it's still not in place," he said.
"We all know that this is necessary and for the Government not to have organised this and made sure they are able to deliver this, it's really not good enough.
"It shows across the board the lack of urgency that the Government have with a lot of aspects in relation to dealing with the pandemic."
