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The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) postponed a key meeting to decide whether or not Covid-19 restrictions can be eased next month.
The meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday to ease restrictions in April was postponed until Monday.
NPHET says it wants more time to see if there is a steady trend of increasing cases and to evaluate all the available data.
Public health officials will advise the government ahead of a cabinet decision on Tuesday.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin says they haven’t decided whether the limited Level 5 relaxation that was planned can go ahead.
He said: “No decision has been made regarding the post-April 5 situation. No decision has been made.”
“We will collaborate with public health advice and other research related to this.
It comes as the European Commission has decided not to introduce a vaccine export ban in any country amid a dispute over storage.
But new criteria will be applied when assessing individual export requests, which means that the available supply for a country seeking exports and whether they have played ball with the EU on supply will be taken into account.
EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis says that each vaccine export request will be taken on a case-by-case basis.
He said: “Some 10 million doses have been exported from the EU to the UK and no zero doses have been exported from the UK to the EU.”
“So if we talk about reciprocity, solidarity and global responsibility, it is clear that we have to look at those aspects of reciprocity and professionalism.”
Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has said export bans could cause a slowdown in the pace of vaccine production.
He said the Irish government believes that banning exports is the wrong approach.
He said: “If we get into the space of blocking the export of certain products linked to vaccines and that results in retaliation from other trading blocs, we could slow down the pace of manufacturing and that doesn’t make sense.”
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