Taoiseach Micheal Martin admitted on live TV last night that he couldn't be "definitive" that Ireland wouldn't experience another harsh lockdown.
The Fianna Fail leader said that he couldn't give assurance that there would not be a fourth wave of the virus which would plunge Ireland into another strict stretch of Level 5 restrictions.
Speaking on Virgin Media's The Tonight Show, the Taoiseach was asked by Matt Cooper: "Are you suggesting that you would be confident that once the vaccination programme gets to a certain point that next winter we’re not going to have a fourth wave and have to go into lockdown again?"
The Taoiseach answered: "I can never be definitive about that in terms of how this pandemic evolves."
He added: "It might be interesting to note that the president of the [European] Commission was in touch with me over a fortnight ago and they look forward to a situation where we will have a faster readjustment of vaccines...these vaccines that deal with any emerging variants in the future."
He said that the pandemic won't end with one "big bang" and that the current path of a slow easing of restrictions will continue to help with getting the country back on track.
He said: "This is the next phase so they are ordering millions of more vaccines for 2022 and 2023.
"So what I see evolving is a more advanced sort of settled pattern of dealing with this pandemic, it won’t end with one big bang."
