Ireland is likely to see prolonged restrictions for the first six months of the year, Taoiseach Micheal Martin admitted this morning.
The Fianna Fail leader confirmed on Friday that lockdown would last until the end of February at least - but this morning said we are looking at six months of lockdown restrictions.
Speaking to RTE Radio One's Brendan O'Connor, Mr Martin said: "I'd like to see figures well down, well, well down, very low(before we start easing restrictions).
"The case numbers have to be in the hundreds... the new variant is my main concern, it will become the dominate variant here.
"We will be witnessing far more prolonged restrictions to date.
"That is my sense of it until we get control.
"Human behaviour will defeat the virus, and that means restrictions."
He added: "I'm not saying there will be a six month lockdown but I'm saying there will be a conservative reopening."
The Fianna Fail leader added that we will be in a changed environment by the summer with more vaccines available to us.
The Taoiseach also admitted he is "very worried" about the vaccine situation as new variants continue to appear worldwide.
Mr Martin conceded that the delay in production of the AstraZeneca vaccine is a concern and said the vaccine for "over 70s will be delayed".
He added: "I'm very worried of the emergence of the variants.
"There's two issues here, there's a race against time, on one hand the vaccine roll out and on the other hand the spread of these variants.
"The potential of new variants on vaccine efficacy(is a worry)."
"I'm concerned about that as well(slow down of manufacturing)."
