The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) is to recommend keeping pubs closed as Ireland moves into phase four of its roadmap for re-opening the country.
Under the plan, pubs which do not serve food were due to re-open on Monday, August 10th.
But on his way into a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the Government was going to be cautious.
"We had a meeting with the Acting Chief Medical Officer now, and we'll have a Cabinet meeting next and a decision will be made at Cabinet and we'll announce it afterwards."
Mr Varadkar said he did not want to preempt the decision, but added: "What I can say is that it's an unfortunate truth that this pandemic is still raging across the world, and even in Europe where it's under relative control.
"We have seen an increase in cases across Europe, including here in Ireland, so relative to other European countries we're still doing quite well and we want to keep it that way.
"And we want to make sure we do nothing that jeopardizes the opening of schools and colleges over the next couple of weeks.
"That's why, on the advice of NPHET, we'll be recommending to Cabinet that we take a very cautious approach for the next couple of weeks.
"I know that's going to come as a further blow to some of the sectors that have not been re-opened - but we just can't risk moving backwards to risk the schools re-opening".
BREAKING: Tanaiste says the decision made at Cabinet today will come as a “further blow” to sectors which have so far been unable to reopen. (This doesn’t sound positive for pubs) pic.twitter.com/sRdixLwdtt
— Shane Beatty (@ShaneBeattyNews) August 4, 2020
Taoiseach Micheál Martin would not be drawn on the issue directly, but said the advice from NPHET was "very firm".
Phase four was to see pubs, bars, hotel bars and casinos re-open - while gatherings of up to 100 people indoors and 500 outdoors would have been permissible.
Phase four was originally due to kick in on July 20th, but was put back due to a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases.
On Monday, the Vintners' Federation of Ireland warned that if some pubs do not re-open next Monday they may never resume trading again.
CEO of the Vintners' Federation of Ireland, Padraig Cribben, said he was worried pubs were being blamed for the mistakes of the general public.
He said: "What we're concerned will happen is that the government will take a view that we will send a message to the general public via keeping the pubs closed.
"The message is, 'things are very bad, we even have to keep the pubs closed'.
"It's not acceptable to use the pubs, the publicans, their family businesses and their 25,000 employees as a conduit to get the message out.
He added: "We're in a big different world five months on where people understand they may not be complying with it but they know what social distancing means.
"In a lot of instances you have big movements of people together but not to the same extent you had in March, we're talking about two different worlds."
This article has been updated. Read more here
