The Government plans to re-open indoor hospitality on Monday July 26th.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar says work is under way to finalise the guidelines for that re-opening:
"We're getting things in place," he says.
"It looks like we're going to have an app reader."
"That restaurant owners and publicans can use to verify that the Covid cert is valid and so on."
"Work is ongoing on that, and we're kinda targeting Monday the 26th."
He says the law needs to go through the Seanad, and the President will also need time to read it and sign it.
Tanaiste @LeoVaradkar believes we will need to ‘get through at least another Winter’ before the pandemic is behind us. Says vaccinating all adults might not help achieve herd immunity and teenagers might need to be vaccinated.
— Andrew Lowth (@AndrewLowth1) July 15, 2021
Taoiseach Says Delta Is A Concern
Taoiseach Micheál Martin believes there is an element of risk to re-opening.
However, he says it will be managed:
"Well I have concerns obviously with the Delta variant, of course."
He says Delta is rising even before indoor hospitality opens.
However, Micheal Martin says it's a "substantially different" situation to Christmas.
"The majority of those eligble for vaccination are fully vaccinated and we've very high numbers with one dose."
