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The Government cannot rule out the reimposition of Covid restrictions, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said, but he added that his hope was that the country could “ride out” the current wave of infections.
“Nobody can rule out the reimposition of restrictions,” Mr Varadkar told journalists in Brussels. “The CMO (chief medical officer, Dr Tony Holohan) was clear about that in his letter. I’ve always been clear that I thought we’d have to get through at least another winter before we can say that the pandemic was safely behind us.”
However, Mr Varadkar added: “We do have 800 more beds in our hospital system than we had before the pandemic, we have surge capacity in the ICUs. We have the ability, if needs be, to use the private hospitals so, you know, it is possible for us to ride out this wave, to get through the second peak of delta, without having to reimpose restrictions. But that can’t be guaranteed unfortunately.”
Mr Varadkar also said that the in hospitals the current wave is “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
“Most of the people in ICU are not vaccinated. So we’d ask the people who haven’t been vaccinated to please do so.”
Mr Varadkar said that the reopening of hospitality was being done in “a cautious way with controls and protections... but it’s getting back to normal, it’s not the old normal, it’s the new normal, at least until next spring”.
“You know the simplest thing is to say to people ‘stay at home’. The second simplest is ‘go back to normal’. The bit in between, which is risk mitigation, safely reducing risk but acknowledging there is a risk is a bit more difficult, and that’s a challenge that we haven’t had,” he said.
Asked if he understood the frustration of nightclub owners who are scrambling to prepare for reopening without clear guidelines, he said: “I totally understand the frustration. But you know this is an evolving situation.
“We only received the advice on Monday nature of sales, and we’ve been engaging with them ever since, so we’d expect to have those guidelines out today, so to be ready for tonight.”
He had no plans to go to a nightclub himself, he said.
Mr Varadkar is in Brussels for a meeting of leaders of the European people’s Party Group, the alliance of Christian Democratic parties of which Fine Gael is a member.
It takes place in advance of an EU summit today and tomorrow, which is being attended by Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
The Tánaiste said that the EPP leaders would discuss “pan European issues, how we deal with the pandemic which is ongoing, the energy price crisis which is affecting the entire continent, and also other issues, for example, around the rule of law in Poland”.
He said that the EPP’s approach to Poland had been one of “inclusion”.
“You know, we’ve tried to keep people in the club and keep people in the European Union, including United Kingdom, but obviously that wasn’t successful.
“And in relation to Poland, the opposition to the government in Poland is led by the EPP, you know, Donald Tusk, the President is leading the opposition in Poland and is very much saying to the Polish people that when the next elections comes ‘choose a European course, choose to be a full member of the European Union again’ and I look forward to campaigning for Donald in Poland when that time comes.”