Indoor dining at Irish pubs is on track to reopen in just over two weeks, Leo Varadkar has confirmed.
The Tanaiste shared the latest update on the government's reopening plans, with the full return of pubs across the country targeted for July 5.
And Mr Varadkar has said that all of July's big lockdown reopenings are currently set to proceed as planned.
The Government will hold another crunch meeting before the end of the month to formally sign off on the stage of lockdown lifting moves.
The main ones for July are going to be the reopening of pubs and restaurants indoors on July 5 and the resumption of international travel on July 19.
Both of these are on course, but Mr Varadkar said that the Government is still ‘keeping an eye’ on the worrying situation in England with the spread of the Delta variant.
Mr Varadkar said: “[England's] numbers seem to be around 7,000 a day, [so they] haven’t gone up much in recent days.
“But that could change very dramatically so we have to keep a close eye on the situation.
“But as things stand for now the plan is to proceed with the July reopening as planned, international travel restrictions on the 19th of July.
“And then further relaxation in August and among the things under consideration for August is a phased return to the office.
“Level two allows for people to return to the office for training, induction and meetings, level one is a staggered phase return to the office.
“At the end of June, when we have a Cabinet meeting we will be able to work on that and obviously engage with employers and unions.”
Mr Varadkar also commented on criticism of his comments last week where he said we could soon see people back in the office workplaces, in phased stages from August.
Some unions and employee groups are saying it isn’t fair that they workers may have to tell bosses whether they’ve been vaccinated or not.
Mr Varadkar said: “It’s never been the case in Ireland with exceptions in very rare circumstances, dental procedures or operations, where anyone was under an obligation to tell their employer what medicines they were on, what vaccines they have taken or if they had an infectious disease.
“It’s never been a requirement that employees have to tell their employers private medical information, and you’d want to have a really strong overwhelming public health case for that to change.”
