An infectious disease expert says it is not clear what the benefit of postponing the re-opening of indoor dining will be.
It comes as the Cabinet sub-committee on COVID-19 meets Monday night to consider data from NPHET.
Health officials will give their take on the risks of the spread of the Delta variant, and whether re-opening indoor dining on July 5th is wise.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar earlier said the return of indoor dining is "not inevitable".
But he added: "We will have to see all the advice, receive all the presentations today and tomorrow and make a decision.
"The one thing I can say to everyone – citizens, employers, employees – what we want to avoid is having to go backwards.
"We want to avoid a situation whereby it is start-stop. So, a slow, cautious, methodical, logical approach is what we have done up until now; had a very successful reopening so far and we want to stay on that track."
Dr Jack Lambert is a consultant in infectious diseases at The Mater Hospital.
He told The Hard Shoulder there is going to be an increase in case numbers regardless.
"I'm not sure what the objective is now, to be honest, because if you look at the UK [it] has an increase in the Delta variant but it's not impacting on hospital admissions.
"And there's reasons for that - if you look at who's getting infected now in Ireland, I looked at the last two weeks data, and the average age now is 25.
"It was 35 a few months ago, and there's very few cases in the elderly now.
"So we're in a different place now than before - and the issue is is delaying two weeks going to make a difference?
"The numbers are going to increase, they've already increased in the UK - the UK is weeks and weeks ahead of us.
"We did this last year - back in May, I think we'd an opportunity to open up safely and we decided 'Ireland's going to be different from the rest of Europe'.
"I think we'd an opportunity last year to kind of follow the rest of Europe, open up safely - we didn't do that - and then the virus came back again in the autumn and we went back into lockdown."
'Going to increase indoors and outdoors'
But he says people need somewhere to go, or they will go to each other's homes.
"I think we actually have to think about how we can safely re-open, including the hospitality industry and indoor settings as well.
"And I'm not sure the rationale behind delaying two weeks - because I think already you see what's happening in the UK, the numbers are increasing because this virus is more infectious.
"But they're going to increase indoors, they're also going to increase outdoors if you don't give people some kind of place for them to continue to socialise safely.
"They're going to socialise at home and there's going to be infections I think in the home, rather than the hospitality sector".
And Dr Lambert says we cannot just be looking at case numbers anymore.
"We have vaccinated healthcare workers, we have vaccinated many of the most vulnerable - I think we really need to look at, in parallel to all of this talk, we need to be revving up our vaccination and those that we haven't got.
"But we are in a better place than we were last year; more people have been vaccinated in Ireland obviously than last year, so I don't think we're going to see a replay of what happened in December.
"I think we're in a different place - so we can't just look at numbers, we have to look at context.
"Vaccines, different time of the year, the hospitality industry is better prepared this time around.
"I think they have to have a think about what we can do to support the hospitality industry, because there's a huge psychological and economic loss that we continue to suffer just based on I think numbers - and I think it's more than numbers."
Travel restrictions 'aren't going to work'
Dr Lambert adds that stopping or delaying international travel is unlikely to stop the variant.
"This new virus is a more infectious virus than the previous virus in December.
"So it's mutated, become more infectious, and is going to take over the world basically.
"The previous viruses are going to die out because this one has a selective advantage.
"So all of the the blocking people from travelling around the world to stop the spread of this new Delta variant isn't going to work.
"It just means we have to do an even better job of COVID mitigation, COVID prevention, hand-washing, masks social distancing.
"We just need to do things even better than we've done them before, or the virus will increase."
