Cabinet signs off on reopening of indoor dining

Taoiseach issues a note of caution around the prevalence of the Delta variant and urges people to remain vigilant

People will be able to eat indoors under some restrictions from next Monday. 

Indoor dining will reopen on Monday as planned, the Taoiseach has said.

However, he was less specific with regard to any increase in the numbers at weddings and issued a note of caution around the prevalence of the Delta variant.

Speaking after Cabinet signed off on the reopening of indoor dining, Micheál Martin said that regulations were being worked on and would be presented in the coming days. 

President Michael D Higgins signed the legislation, named the Health (Amendment) (No.2) Bill 2021.

Mr Martin said that the Government's approach to reopening has been cautious.

He said that there would be an obligation on people to respect the laws around the Covid passes, which will allow fully vaccinated people to dine indoors.

"We are taking it step by step - so we've made a decision today in respect of indoor dining, which will reopen on July 26, and the regulations we worked on will be published in advance, along with the guidelines," he said.

"I think there's an obligation on all of us as individuals and an obligation on the operators of facilities and restaurants that the rules pertaining to indoor dining are fully adhered to in spirit. There really has to be adherence to it. Because we managed, so far, to reopen society across many different sectors, which has been very helpful to people at work and so on, from personal services and retail, construction, and so forth."

However, Mr Martin said that he remains concerned about the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19.

The modeling we're seeing is very, very clear that irrespective of what setting, we're now dealing with a very highly transmissible variant, and the need for absolute individual responsibility and vigilance is very clear, as well as collective. 

And we have to work in a very focused way to try and manage what would be a continuing spike in cases over the coming weeks, monitor then the relationship between that spike in cases with hospitalisation and ICU, so will be a challenging period ahead."

Asked about other measures such as the increase of numbers at weddings to 100 from August, Mr Martin said that a decision would be made next week.