It is unlikely there will be 60,000 people at Croke Park for the All-Ireland football final on Saturday September 11th, the Minister for Health has said.
“What we had was agreement on 50 per cent capacity, so about 40,000 people, maybe vaccinated or unvaccinated,” Stephen Donnelly told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Restrictions on organised outdoor events and mass gatherings are to ease from September 6th, with events for vaccinated people at 75 per cent capacity permitted outdoors.
The Minister said that his view was that 60,000 people fully vaccinated was “probably a lower risk” than the 40,000 people to be permitted at the final as a Government pilot event.
“Remember 90 per cent of the population is already vaccinated so if you had an adult population at Croke Park regardless, the vast, vast majority of people in there are fully vaccinated anyway,” he said.
Mr Donnelly also pointed out that Minister for Sport Jack Chambers and his department had indicated that it was not sporting events themselves that were causing outbreaks.
Outbreak sources
“They spend a lot of time working with the sporting organisations on whether or not the events are causing outbreaks,” he said.
“Interestingly the events are very well run, there isn't a lot of data suggesting that there are superspreader events from the stadiums, but more interestingly when you talk to the local testing teams, what they find is back in the counties you see outbreaks as people are going to watch the match in pubs or in other people's houses.”
The Minister said that the plan to ease restrictions was “a good plan” but that it was not without risk despite the success of the vaccination programme.
Ireland still had the highest Covid rate in the EU, so the Government was trying to find a cautious approach, he said.
Another lockdown
Npht modelling had indicated that cases would continue to rise and then stabilise in October, by which time schools and colleges would have reopened and people would have returned to work.
The target was for 90 per cent of the population over the age of 16 to be vaccinated, and at present the rate was 87 per cent, with 91 percent partially vaccinated. Mr Donnelly was confident that the target would be reached.
There were a lot of factors that would have to be considered such as the number of cases and pressures on the health system.
When asked if there could be another lockdown, the Minister said he hoped not, but that the virus had continuously thrown up new challenges.
