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IRELAND’S NEW ROADMAP for the easing of Covid-19 restrictions is expected to be published at the end of the month.
It is understood that the plan will be published on 31 August following a series of meetings by public health officials next week.
The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) will hold a meeting next Wednesday to discuss the easing of restrictions with the government which will be followed by a meeting of the Covid-19 sub-committee next Friday.
It is expected that officials will then work through the proposed plan ahead of the announcement on 31 August.
The new roadmap is expected to look at how we deal with the next stage of the pandemic from September and through winter.
It will also likely look at a further easing of restrictions later in September.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Six One News this evening, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that the roadmap will be “comprehensive”.
“We will be going into a new era of the management of Covid-19, but there will always be a need for personal responsibility in the coming months,” he said.
He added that today’s meeting was not about drafting this roadmap, but “to get a sense of where we are now” in relation to the Delta variant.
“The incidence is high in Ireland, very high relative to other European countries, and also the vaccination rate is very high,” he said.
“The overwhelming message from today’s meeting is that the vaccination is highly impactful in giving protection as it is preventing people from going into hospital and ICU.”
He added that the government need to continue to proceed with the reopening of society “in a measured way” and by giving clarity to the sectors “like the entertainment industry” who have yet to reopen.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said today that the Government “is very aware that it’s been extraordinarily stressful and difficult” for the sector, and promised to provide clarity “before the end of the month”.
His comments came after Culture Minister Catherine Martin told a meeting of live entertainment representatives yesterday to lobby her Cabinet colleagues for support in the sector.
The meeting ended without a return date for live events agreed, and representatives of the industry left disappointed.
At today’s Cabinet meeting, it was noted that Covid-19 numbers have been higher in recent days.
This was attributed to the impact of indoor hospitality resuming across the country, as well as other measures that have been introduced. It was also put down to the fact that we are “naturally social people” in Ireland.
Other issues discussed by Cabinet today included the prospect of employees returning to the workplace, and how individual sectors can utilise antigen testing themselves to further the reopening of society.
It is expected that Government will look at a new “Winter Plan” to help ease pressure on the HSE in the months ahead.
The National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) will also continue to assess vaccine boosters over the coming weeks.
Speaking on Tuesday, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said that NIAC has advised that boosters be given around the same time as the flu shot.
“That would normally happen around the last week of September, first week of October,” Donnelly said.
“NIAC are currently looking at the details of any potential booster campaign and I expect to receive an advice from that next week from NIAC, which will allow us to proceed with more detailed planning and give people a sense of when they can expect a booster and which group,” he said.
It is also expected that the numbers attending Covid-19 vaccination centres will start to tail off from mid-September due to the high numbers of people who are already vaccinated.
It comes as HSE Chief Paul Reid said that 72,000 12-15 year olds have received a Covid vaccine since the programme opened up to that cohort.
Speaking at today’s briefing, Reid said 124,000 people in this age group have been registered for a vaccine.
84% of adults have been fully vaccinated against Covid, while 90% of adults have received at least one vaccine dose.
Around 6.49 million doses have been administered to date.
Additional reporting by Christina Finn.
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Retrofitting is only available to the people with plenty of cash . Same as most other benefits .
All I read in the above article is that we need to lower our living standards drastically. I do not trust anyone who tells me we need to eat less meat and then replace it with processed crap.
@An Drew Bearla: Yes, all that came out of the big meeting in Davos is that we must stop eating meat and dairy or the world will starve, and we must share our cars or cycle or walk, all the mullarkey Ryan is spouting and all from a bunch that then sat down to a four course meat laden lunch after flying in on 1500 private jets. The narrative to blame the ordinary consumer and deflect away from their lavish carbon laden lifestyles is ridiculous. Animal farm springs to mind
Will do this, will improve that. All talk and no action. The government has no motivation to implement any of these policies. Still using diesel commuter trains ffs.
@Tomo: We are making progress faster than ever before. I would live to speed it up too, but denial of what’s happening is nor helpful.
Bottom line is what comes out of our chimneys and out of the vehicle tailpipes isn’t good for us and has resulted in worse health for our population and more deaths. Even if you think climate change isn’t real (it is) then only a fool would continue to not tackle us poisoning ourselves.
@Barry Somers: a few more new taxes will sort everything.
That’s the problem, the greens solution is to tax the problem with no alternative. Of course, people are turning against it
@Jim Buckley Barrett: Not true.
@Nicholas McMurry: Yes it is true. Tax tax tax from a fella that knows about as much about climate change as my 8yr old. All the solutions Eamo is pushing for at present are financially or infrastructurally unviable like hydrogen which is inhibitively expensive to make or offshore wind which we have no way due to planning restrictions and lack of infrastructure make, but which are the chief objectives of E3G which ol Eamo is/was a senior associate of, as usual the self serving bull we have gotten used to in Irish politics. Any man that signs off on tax incentives for fuel for private jets and the writing off of carbon footprint for such is not green. No viable alternatives for anything, no reduction in our carbon footprint despite all the waffle, lying about our agricultural footprint throwing our farmers and food producers under a bus because they are a soft target while letting big corporations off the hook by giving them all our carbon credits from our grasslands, hedgegrows and forestry. Ireland is not one of the worst polluters as we are so often told to justify taxing the life out of us we just fall foul of the carbon credit rules that the large industrial countries set up to make themselves look far better than they really are, America, Germany France etc
@Nicholas McMurry: of course its true, if the government and greens in particular wanted to actually do something that wasn’t a punitive tax measure, it would be a shock.
Insulation is the most effective measure, yet they persist in making the retrofitting policy, part of the convoluted seai scheme which requires “trained” certified installers, when homeowners could, depending on their current skills learn to install it just as effectively themselves, by watching a few instructional videos, just like the “trained” installers did…
Subsidising insulation for domestic projects with a zero vat rate, would encourage more people to retrofit insulation to their homes themselves, reducing the amount of heating from all sources, along with particulate and carbon emissions across the board.
Better put the old age pension up. Where will all the food come from? More homes will be needed.
Anyone find those TRVs (main image) a complete waste of time?
I find that after a year the da*n thing is stuck on full heat. (I’ve checked the pin underneath and it seems to move freely) Was this just another way for the plumbers to make a few bucks :) ?
So, if we live in England or Wales and insulate our homes we could live for 836,000 years. I don’t want to live that long.
Why does an article in an Irish publication write about a foreign country without stipulating that it is a study done in that foreign country?
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