A Trinity College professor believes sport could return in June or July in Ireland, but thinks crowds could be limited to a maximum of 100 people.
Luke O'Neill, a professor in biochemistry and immunology, believes there may be a loosening of restrictions for people under 30 which may allow sport to restart.
Speaking on Off The Ball AM, he said: "Young people are pretty protected to be honest and if you’re under 35 you’ve a very low chance of having a difficult disease so you may see loosening up to allow young people a bit more freedom, that’s the first thing that might happen.
"Some countries have allowed crowds of 50-100. Some countries have found that to be a reasonable limit. So you might have a situation where anybody under 30 will be able to meet in crowds of under 50 which would allow sport to restart, you wouldn’t have thousands of people watching them."
He added: "Once we see fewer cases and fewer people in ICU and once the viral level begins to drop then we’re going to see changes, we’re talking about June or July so we are beginning to look at June of July as a slight loosening and sport has to be a part of it as we know because sport is essential for our mental health and physical health.
"If I was in the HSE I would have sport right up the list of list of things to try to deal with sooner rather than later."
Professor O'Neill believes amateur sport will come back first and admits bigger events "may be trickier" to host.
He said: "The amateur sport has to come back. That is going to come back soon-ish because obviously people love that and it’s having a big negative affect on people’s lives so it could be that a golf courses reopen or you’d allow two teams to play a game.
"Other events may be trickier, again you could have two teams playing each other but you won’t have many people watching them sadly but then the events could restart.
"You might have a situation where you give out 100 tickets and no more and the 100 spectators would gather to watch two teams play because the fewer people that are going to gather the less this is going to spread so I think we’ll see movement in that direction."
