Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that fast-tracking plans being finalised by the Government could see the whole country fully reopened by mid-July.
He told RTE's 2FM that the recent number of low cases of COVID-19 is an "encouraging" sign that the lockdown could be completely lifted a whole month ahead of the original schedule.
The Taoiseach said: "We brought some things into the phase that started this week including opening more shops that we had originally planned.
"We're now working on revising phases four and five so that we can have the country almost fully opened by the middle of July instead of the middle of August.
"The kind of things we're looking at for example is bringing forward the opening of the hairdressers and the salons and a couple of things like that and we'll have that work done probably this week.
"That does all depend on us continuing to keep the virus under control, and there is always the risk that it might make a comeback, but the last couple of days have been quite encouraging notwithstanding the deaths being reported, which of course is very sad."
He added: "The number of new cases every day is now very low figures, single figures in some cases, and we're doing thousands of tests per day but only about 1% are coming back positive, so that gives us some assurance that we're going in the right direction."
His hopeful plans come as Dublin recorded just one new case of coronavirus over the last 24 hours with the capital edging closer towards the zero mark, according to new statistics.
