Taoiseach Micheal Martin has warned restrictions will stay in place for the rest of this month - but government is "confident" they can be eased next month.
Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan gave a ray of hope as he predicted restrictions will be relaxed in February if all goes to plan.
It comes as government ministers were speaking ahead of a crunch Cabinet meeting in Dublin on Wednesday, with changes to the isolation rules for close contacts on the table. Follow live updates here.
The Taoiseach was reluctant to confirm what new measures would be put in place next month, and said that decision would not be made today.
The Fianna Fail leader urged people to get vaccinated as soon as they possibly can, and said we need to be "very cautious" about Omicron as over 1,000 people are currently being treated in hospital.
He told reporters outside Leinster House: "I think the advice has been very clear from the Chief Medical Officer in relation to this, all of this is about balance, in terms of supply chains and essential services.
"There will be further meetings in respect of further restrictions, but obviously for this month, they're in place.
"The peak hasn't yet been reached and the public health authorities expect we will reach the peak within the next week, but we cannot be definitive or certain about that."
And Mr Ryan offered an optimistic prediction timeline, saying he was "very confident" we would see an easing of restrictions next month.
He told reporters: "I'm very confident we will be able to ease restrictions as we go into February, but the details of that we won't decide yet.
"First and foremost we still need to get through this difficult period, we still have very high case numbers so we shouldn't look too far forward, we should focus on getting the case numbers down, keeping the hospital numbers down now. Particularly the hospital numbers, that's the first priority.
"All the science we've been told says this will be a short wave, and if we can get through it with hospital numbers down we will be able to start lifting restrictions again."
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