Dublin needs to focus on COVID-19 transmission in people's homes, rather than in business.
That's according to business group DublinTown, which says restrictions on the city are not the answer.
It comes as the capital looks set to be placed on level three restrictions by the weekend.
The National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) is meeting this morning to make a recommendation to Government.
It's expected they'll say Dublin should be moved fully up to level three restrictions.
Richard Guiney, CEO of DublinTown, says : "Anytime that there's any kind of talk we notice the impact almost immediately on footfall .
"Last week the footfall was at 63% of what it was in 2019, but even just the talk of the increase in the virus circulation impacted.
"So despite the good weather last week, the footfall fell.
"So we would expect that as we enter level three, which I think is going to happen based on all of the reports, we will see a further reduction in our footfall.
"The footfall primarily declines very sharply at about 6 o'clock in the evening, so it's the hospitality businesses that are feeling it most.
"We know that something needs to be done, the virus incidence is increasing, but I suppose we're saying let's be strategic about this.
"We need an economy, we need a vibrant Dublin city centre to attract FDI in the longer term, and we need to sustain employment for after there is a resolution to COVID.
"So we need to be quite strategic - the virus is circulating in the suburbs, it's circulating from people's homes and I think that's where we need to concentrate our efforts.
"And particularly speak to the young people who are perhaps not as aware of the implications for not just themselves [and] their families, but also the economy that they're going to be working in".
"We do need to look at the messaging around public transport: is the virus actually circulating in public transport?
"We certainly would see that anecdotally it isn't, but yet when people were advised not to use public transport the very next day our footfall was down by 26%.
"All of those messages, we need to look at those messages - nobody wants to bring people into an unsafe environment but I think we need to be very strategic in terms of where we focus our energies in reducing the transmission".
