LEO VARADKAR says he's looking to get rid of the 14-day quarantine currently in place for visitors arriving in Ireland.
The Taoiseach has given his stamp of approval on loosening up the nation's borders as early as next week as Ireland begins to ease its restrictions on travel.
Varadkar insisted that by way of using 'air bridges', the threat of spreading coronavirus is minimised, though he warned that caution was still needed to avoid a second wave of infection.
"I think we need to be very careful about that," he said.
"We've got out caseload down so low now, so low, that there's a real risk of re-importing it from the countries where the virus is still so prevalent.
"I think if we're going to open air travel between Ireland and other countries we need to do it safely and we also need to do it through what we call air bridges."
Air bridges are effectively agreed flight-paths between two destinations with equally low Covid-19 infection rates.
In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce a similar 'air bridges' plan for Britain on Sunday, meaning that travel between Ireland and the UK could return to normality soon.
