The Taoiseach has said that “severe” lockdown will continue for at least another nine weeks.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin revealed to the Irish Mirror that lockdown restrictions in Ireland will remain in place until the end of April.

He continued in the interview to say that pubs, restaurants and other close contact services such as hairdressers may remain closed beyond this date.

“What’ll happen next will be modest, I wouldn’t overstate it in the sense of announcements and so on”, he said, speaking in government buildings yesterday (Feb 18).

“We are looking at a continuation of severe restrictions certainly right into April.

“We’ve already certainly indicated that beyond Easter we’ll look at it again but until the end of April you can look at significant restrictions and we’ll review it after that then because we’ll have to see where we are.”

“We’ve got to take it in phases, we can not project the full year out, it would be dishonest to try and do that with Covid-19.”

“That said, we understand where personal services come in as a sector and that’s something we’d like to be looking at some stage but we do want to get vaccinations done.”

“So I think we’ll be looking at all that sometime towards the end of the second quarter, if not before it.”

Meanwhile, according to the Irish Times, while the level 5 restrictions will remain unchanged, it will be recommended by the Cabinet sub-committee that schools begin the phased opening at the start of March.

Elsewhere, we asked Irish Twitter to detail their worst dates.