A professor of health systems says falling case numbers are down to the people and not action by the Government.
That's according to Professor Anthony Staines from Dublin City University (DCU).
He told The Hard Shoulder as the cases reduce and stabilise, things will go back to normal - hopefully by Christmas.
"The Irish population have been very reasonable mostly - with very few exceptions - very sensible, but mostly done what they're asked to do.
"You could argue the Government hasn't done their bit in ramping up public health to control case numbers.
"I think that's a very fair criticism.
"But the vaccination programme has worked extremely well, and hopefully that will get us out of this and case numbers will keep going down over the next couple of months.
"And we'll be back to more or less something like normal by Christmas".
And he says he is very happy that there has not been a spike as schools returned.
"I'm absolutely delighted - our own work, and NPHET's work, suggested there was a real risk of a very substantial spike in cases, and that hasn't happened which is what everybody wants.
"The number of cases is going up in the five to 14-year-olds, but it's going down in the 15 to 24-year-olds - and it's more or less balancing.
"Everybody wants this to level out and hopefully start declining.
"We've had fairly stable case numbers for a good while now, numbers starting to come down over the last two weeks - and that's fantastic and long may it continue.
"I'd be delighted if it came down faster."
He says while future spikes are always a possibility, things are looking good.
"There is a risk that there will be further spikes... I think the evidence is that it is fairly delicate, but so far everything's moving in the right direction.
"What's making it delicate is it's going up in some age groups and going down in others, and overall the number of cases is staying around the same."
Prof Staines says this means the reproductive number of the virus "can switch very quickly".
"Either to a good place, where numbers start going down very quickly, or to a not so good place where numbers start going up very quickly.
"Now we have a huge number of people vaccinated, and there's an extraordinary level of uptake in secondary school-aged children - which I think is going to make a very big difference to what happens here."
