The Taoiseach Micheál Martin announced on Tuesday evening that there will be no increase in the number of people allowed to attend sporting events due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It means that for at least the remainder of August, just 200 people will be allowed to attend events such as club GAA games and League of Ireland fixtures.
The announcement was made following a meeting of the cabinet.
"The cabinet has agreed to continue with the current public health measures that are in place," said Martin.
"The current numbers of people attending indoor and outdoor gatherings will remain unchanged.
"We are doing what we are doing to save lives and give our economy the best chance we can to reopen safely and sustainably."
Martin clarified that a review will take place three weeks from August 10th.
Sporting organisations had hoped the numbers allowed to attend games would be increased to 500.
Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn explained that the number of people in a large stadium is not where the risk lies regarding the spread of Covid-19. The risk lies in people mixing before and after games.
"It's important that a message doesn't go out that outdoors is in any way dangerous," he said.
"Outdoors is safer. We want to encourage people to meet outdoors.
"Clearly if you have a small number of people in a large stadium, from a public health perspective, there's no public health issue with that.
"The concern is that people have to get to the stadium. They have to go home from the stadium, they congregate before and afterwards.
"We have multiple instances at this point of cases arising from people sharing transport, from households mixing. This virus thrives when people mix."
Photo by Brendan Moran/Sportsfile
