HEALTH MINISTER STEPHEN Donnelly has said that couples who were due to get married this week will not receive any grace period to amend their plans.

It was announced this evening that the entire nation is going to Level 3 restrictions – you can read exactly what that entails here. 

The number of people allowed to attend weddings has been reduced from 50 to 25. Couples who are due to get married tomorrow can still bring 50 people as the restrictions only kick in at midnight tomorrow. 

It will not be possible to attend a wedding in another county from Wednesday. Couples who are living in a particular county, but who have existing plans to wed, can travel to get married outside that county but their guests can’t come with them.

Speaking this evening, Donnelly said that “unfortunately”, the Government was not in a position to extend a grace period to couples who had arranged their weddings under Level 2 guidelines. 

A grace period was extended to weddings in Donegal when it emerged the county was to move to Level 3 last month. On that occasion, the new restrictions were announced on Thursday but weddings scheduled for that weekend could go ahead with 50 guests instead of 25. 

The number of new daily confirmed cases has been increasing in Ireland over the past few weeks, with more than 1,000 new cases confirmed over the weekend.

On Saturday, there were 613 new cases confirmed, 470 cases on Friday and 442 on Thursday.

According to the latest data from the HPSC, the national incidence rate is 107 cases per 100,000 of the population on a 14-day rolling average.