Dr. Tony Holohan:

When we consider disease, it is not just the issue of international travel and the international description. What is of much more interest to us is the more regionalised and fine level of detail. As we return to lower levels of transmission in this country - let us be optimistic for a moment that we will get back to that point - it will start to become more important to consider not just regions but counties, and not just counties but localities. When we get to low levels of transmission of the disease, the objective has to be to pick up cases and outbreaks when they occur as quickly as possible, and to contain them as outbreaks within a locality and to prevent community transmission. That is the reason we consider much finer detail than the NUTS regions in forming our perspective.