Tánaiste Leo Varadkar told the Dáil on Thursday the country would “very definitely” remain in Level 5 Covid-19 restrictions for the full six weeks.
However, at a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday he raised the possibility of the Government discussing an easing of restrictions in around two weeks’ time, it has emerged.
The Fine Gael leader told the Dáil it would be the end of the month before the Government decides what level of restrictions Ireland should be at and what movement there should be for Christmas.
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He said he did not want to provide misinformation about what people would be able to do in December, even though he was asked to give certainty to businesses and individuals making arrangements for the run up to Christmas.
Mr Varadkar said things were “going very well” with the Level 5 restrictions introduced two weeks ago.
But he reiterated: “What we are saying very definitely is that Level 5 is for six weeks.”
And he would make no promises about what level the country could be in at the end of the lockdown, because “in two or three weeks’ time we might have to turn around and say we’re not going to be able to do that”.
“We want to get the number of cases down as low as possible before considering the state of restrictions. We don’t have a decision yet to tell people what level we move to on December 1st.”
However, a number of well-placed sources have confirmed that at a parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday evening, Mr Varadkar raised the possibility of discussing an easing of restrictions later this month.
He said that the Government wanted to have Level 5 in place for “a full two incubation periods, a full four weeks” out of the six before the Government had a conversation on making changes.
Mr Varadkar is understood to have told TDs and Senators that the Government “wants to get the maximum effect out of Level 5” and get the figures down to “really low numbers before we consider any easing”.
One Government source said there was one school of thought that using the full six weeks could potentially enable a move to Level 2 as opposed to Level 3 which would be welcomed by businesses in the immediate run-up to Christmas.
Mr Varadkar has acknowledged to his party, however, that there are strong arguments for relaxing restrictions coming from multiple sectors.
He told his party that there were arguments being made around baby clothes, golf and tennis, and individuals being able to go to the gym and he is understood to have told the party that he himself is finding it difficult not having access to the gym.
He also said there were difficulties with people looking to buy and sell animals online in marts and calls for greater attendance allowances for religious services.
One onlooker said that Mr Varadkar expressed a notable optimism around the trajectory of the disease, saying that he believes the figures are falling faster than he thought they would.
The Tánaiste pointed out that it was only two weeks ago that there were up to 1,200 cases a day and that this dropped to less than half of that now.
He said that overall “things are really going in the right direction” but that it did not yet justify “chipping away” at the regulations.
The National Public Health Emergency Team will meet on Thursday to discuss latest Covid-19 trends two weeks after Level 5 restrictions were introduced nationwide. It reported eight further deaths of patients with Covid-19 and 444 new cases of the virus on Wednesday.
Mr Martin held discussions with Mr Varadkar and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan this week to discuss the current state of play in relation to restrictions. The three Coalition leaders agreed that there would be no “ad-hoc” or “piecemeal” changes to the rules at present as to do so could dilute the public health message, sources confirmed.
The Taoiseach also told a private Fianna Fáil party meeting that the full six weeks must be adhered to which would mean the lockdown would end at the beginning of December.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly on Thursday said it was unlikely Level 5 restrictions would be lifted early despite the recent reduction in the R rate.
While there were early positive indications, he told RTÉ radio’s News at One, Nphet wanted the figures to drop further still. Mr Donnelly said he agreed with the Taoiseach who said on Wednesday that once the figures went down, measures would have to be put in place to keep them down.
The restrictions introduced under Level 3 and then Level 5 appeared to be driving numbers down, but in some parts of the country the rate was not falling and in fact in north Dublin they were actually increasing, he said.
Mr Donnelly said the focus would be on maintaining Level 5 for the next few weeks and then once figures went down, the plan for December would be to open up the country. That could be Level 3, or possibly Level 2, or even a regional approach, he said.
In the Dáil on Thursday, Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice asked Mr Varadkar to indicate if the country would move back to Level 3 or even Level 2 in December.
Mr Fitzmaurice noted that movement outside the county of residence is not permitted in Level 3 but he said people from rural areas working for example, in Dublin, wanted to go home to their families for Christmas.
Mr Varadkar told him that the number of new cases “is falling faster than we thought it would” as is the positivity rate.
It had halved to 3 per cent the other day, “which was really encouraging”, he said, but he stressed that Level 5 restrictions would last the full six weeks.
But he acknowledged Mr Fitzmaurice’s point “that businesses need to prepare and families need to be as open as possible”.
Mr Varadkar said that there were now up to 120,000 tests every week for Covid-19 “which compares very favourably with other European countries. We rank eighth out of 23.”
Ireland was behind Denmark in the number of tests carried out but it now has a higher incidence of the virus than in the State.
This shows it “isn’t all about testing,” even though testing is extremely important, he said.
Mr Varadkar said the State was using the six weeks of Level 5 to try and put in an “even more robust [contact] tracing regime than we had”.
They were increasing the number of people working in tracing with 650 in place currently, 344 of whom are new recruits while the other 306 staff have been redeployed from other areas.
