A junior minister says the Government needs to 'stand up' to the Chief Medical Officer and the Health Service Executive (HSE) over the two metre social distancing rule.
John Halligan has also called for an acceleration of the lockdown restrictions and for cancer screening to resume.
He told Newstalk Breakfast: "At some stage we need to examine whether or not the perceived benefits of the lockdown outweigh the costs - health and economically."
"The economy is facing absolute devastation.
"There's an interesting statistic that 65% of all employment in Ireland, probably slightly higher, is created by small to medium enterprises.
"These are the businesses that are in total lockdown at present - some of them see no way back, and I am fearful for the state of the economy in the future.
"The time has come to give these businesses a break.
"The only way we can do this is to relieve the lockdown as much as possible over the next couple of weeks."
"We seem to have suppressed this disease... where do you call an end to this?
"Do we reach a stage where if we have one death, which is one death too many by the way, and five cases that we continue in lockdown?
"There is a continuing body of evidence that if we don't find a cure for this particular disease that we may have to live with this disease - as we have lived with others".
"I think we need some productive and far-reaching thinking on this".
He said as well as economic health, the lockdown is hurting other areas: "mental health, domestic abuse, self-harm, acute loneliness, isolation".
Mr Halligan said there are ministers who agree with him but that "they need to come out and say this - I think politicians are going to have to be brave".
"But there's no point in them saying it to me, they need to come out and say it on programmes like yourself".
"The lockdown cannot be exclusively dictated by health: politicians make decisions here, government make decisions and they have to look at the long-term health effects on people after this lockdown - and of course the economic devastation that will ensue".
On the social distancing two metre argument, he said: "I don't understand why we're not standing up to Tony Holohan on this".
"The WHO have said quite categorically on a number of occasions that one metre is sufficient, 1.5 metres.
"The [ECDC] have said one metre: why are we different?
"What gives us the right to be different to them, are they more experienced than us or are they not.
"Why are we not questioning Tony Holohan and the HSE as to why - can they tell us, quite specifically, why they differ from the WHO and why they differ from the European Centre for Disease Prevention."
Meanwhile, DCU health professor Anthony Staines has said he backs the decision not to decrease social-distance rule from two metres to one.
"I think people are probably keeping about 1.5 metres away from each other: two metres is further than most people think.
"If it's announced that it's reduced to one metre, people will be about half a metre away from each other.
"And with the best will in the world, that's not enough".
