A professor of health systems says Ireland is currently living with the coronavirus, and this is what it looks like.
Professor Anthony Staines was reacting to advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) to place all counties on level five restrictions.
He told Newstalk Breakfast that something needs to happen before flu season takes hold.
"It's very clear now that COVID-19 is out of control and is rising across the whole country, and that's been clear for some time.
"Whether we should be starting with going to level five is a different question.
"There is good evidence from a whole series of opinion polls that the department have commissioned over the summer - and the last one was two weeks ago - that there's a high level of public support for increased restrictions to control this".
"I think the public is much less concerned about this than some elements within the business community, and at least one element within the Cabinet.
"We're going to need to do something because the number of cases is rising steadily, the number of admissions is rising steadily, intensive care beds is rising steadily."
"And we're coming into the winter.
"Everyone in the Irish health system, before COVID was ever heard of, predicated that this winter was going to be really, really, really bad."
"And unless we're very lucky with a very light flu season, we were in dire trouble".
"COVID is much worse than flu, COVID uses a lot more health service capacity".
"I don't think lockdowns are the right approach, by the way, I think the right approach is to have a very carefully thought-out, well explained plan that says 'How are we getting suppression, how are we going to do that, and then where do we go at the end of that'.
'The virus, not the response, does the damage'
"I think the big weakness is the plan to live with the virus: we are living with the virus, this is what living with the virus looks like.
"You bring the numbers down, they go up again, you bring the numbers down, they go up again.
"And every time they go up, they do appalling economic damage.
"And it is the virus that does the damage - not the response - it's the circulation of the virus itself that changes people's behaviour, that changes people's choices about going in, going out."
"There's lot of bits in the Government's plan, the county-level bits are very important to manage this at county level, to the skills, knowledge and expertise in the county".
"They're moving to high-level restrictions because the plan hasn't worked to date.
"We should probably have started at level four nationally when the plan was brought out, and then work county-by-county, depending on what's going on in the counties.
"But having a national overall response to absolutely everywhere won't work: we need to start with a national response and framework and work within that."
"We nearly brought this under control in June, we didn't - we could have brought this down in June but we didn't.
"It's time to re-think and to learn the message from June".
