A Dublin-based GP has warned that Ireland's contact tracing system 'has essentially collapsed'.
Dr Maitiu O Tuathail says the system is simply not big enough to trace 1,000 people every single day here.
He told The Hard Shoulder that the focus should not all be on a potential vaccine.
"The WHO say you shouldn't use lockdown to control numbers, you should use lockdown to get your house in order.
"And I hope to hell we do that this time around - and what I mean by that is if we had the capacity to test and particularly contact trace that we're falling down on at the moment.
"If we had a first class contact tracing system, a first class testing system - and as I said those treatments are going to continue to improve.
"The focus is all on the vaccines - but there's a lot of other things that, if we got those things right, it could mean we could function as close to normal as possible".
"As a GP on the frontline, and I've been speaking to GPs across the country, most people are able to get a test on the same day or within 24 hours.
"Most people are getting a result within two days, but contact tracing has essentially collapsed.
"We just don't have the capacity to contact trace 1,000 people every single day in Ireland.
"So that's why I think there's such a pressing need to lockdown, because we need to pull those case numbers back so we can start contact tracing them again.
"The first lockdown was inevitable, the second lockdown was unfortunate, but I think a third lockdown to be honest would be unforgivable.
"So we need to get our house in order, and we need to dramatically expand that contact tracing capability - because that has collapsed and that is what's causing huge problems at the moment.
"The other really obvious one is the fact that we're not contact tracing across the border, that's why we have such an astronomical problem in the counties like Donegal and Monghan - it's a joke.
"I'm speaking to GPs on the border every single day, and there's people crossing that border every single day and we're not contact tracing them.
"That's just ridiculous - we need to get that sorted and we need to do that now".
His comments come as there have been 1,269 more coronavirus cases and 13 additional deaths in Ireland on Tuesday.
