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The new restrictions will take effect from midnight, as the government prepares to publish its medium-term plan to deal with Covid-19.
The cabinet will today approve the plan approved yesterday by its subcommittee on the virus.
Green Party leader and Communications Minister Eamon Ryan will attend remotely while restricting their movements. A member of Mr. Ryan’s household is waiting for a Covid-19 test.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said today that the plan represents a “roadmap on how to suppress the virus.”
He said: “[It’s about] How do we move locally? , protect lives. So that’s really what it’s all about today. “
Donnelly said the experience of local lockdowns in the Midlands had shown that the virus could be suppressed.
“So what we learned from the good work of the people of Kildare, Laois and Offaly is that if you move locally and if you move quickly and if the community supports public health doctors and their advice, the virus can be suppressed and repressed very quickly.
“Right now, as we know, the virus is growing rapidly across the country, we have to act fast, we know how to do it. We have done it before we do it again.”
“We have to keep schools open. We have to keep hospitals open and keep people safe and make sure we save a lot of lives.”
Donnelly said the plan would look to the next six to nine months.
Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath said that the movements made in Dublin would be “proportional”, but said that the figures in the capital “were going in the wrong direction”.
“It’s very evident that the numbers in Dublin are going in the wrong direction, unfortunately, so action is required to address that,” he said, “because we don’t want to go back to a point where we are looking at the number of people in the world. hospital and ICU are growing significantly, we cannot allow that to happen.
“Measures will be taken, but they will be proportionate and it will remain open to the government in the coming weeks to review the approach again.”
The plan will see counties and regions ranked 1 through 5 in their handling of the virus, with restrictions applied accordingly.
Public health expert Dr. Gabriel Scally has said he is pleased to see the Government is not taking a “one size fits all” approach to Covid-19 restrictions.
Dr. Scally told Newstalk Breakfast that he was eager to see the details of the government’s national plan for the virus to be released today.
Having a strategic plan was “buying time” and would help keep the virus away from vulnerable people, he said. Dr Scally noted that it is still unknown what long-term effect the virus might have on children and their health. Anything could manifest itself in due course, he warned.
If there was no vaccine for some time, then society would have to take a different approach and we would have to change the way we live, he said.
However, he was confident that there would be a vaccine, as 180 different vaccines were in the works.
“I’m sure science will find a solution.”
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