Gardai at Dublin Airport have caught dozens of people trying to sneak out of Ireland for Botox treatment.
A number of people were stopped trying to travel to Lithuania for cosmetic surgery.
Many passengers returned home after being told that they would be fined €500 for non-essential travel but some chose to continue on their journey.
Travelling outside the country for Botox and other cosmetic treatments are deemed unnecessary and non-essential, Extra.ie reports.
Level Five restrictions say you can only travel out of Ireland for essential medical, health, or dental services, or if you accompany someone you live with who needs essential treatment.
But the number of people trying to travel for non-essential cosmetic treatments has understood to have fallen in recent days.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris slammed people booking dentist appointments in Tenerife to dodge travel restrictions following the Primetime investigation into Irish holidaymakers heading to Spain under the pretence of seeking treatment
He said on Friday’s Late Late show: “Medical intervention, medical treatment is allowed for in the regulations but that is against the clause about how reasonable it is.
“I would suggest that travelling to Tenerife, thousands of kilometres, whenever there are perfectly good dentists here in Ireland is not reasonable.
“From this morning we have changed our approach, we warned people that they may be prosecuted if they carry on on their journey. We don’t regard a dentist’s appointment in Tenerife as being a reasonable excuse to travel.”
“We have found that the €500 fine is perhaps not the deterrent we thought it might be, but we found out today that people have turned back rather than be prosecuted and have a criminal record and risk actually imprisonment or a suspended sentence which is far greater penalty than a €500 fixed penalty notice.
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“We hope that that will send a message in terms of non-essential international travel. There is travel for medical purposes which obviously is essential, people travelling for critical treatment but that’s not dental treatment.”
