The Public Expenditure Minister says it would be "incredibly difficult where to draw the line" if the pandemic bonus is extended.
Frontline healthcare workers are to be given a €1,000 bonus to recognise their efforts since Covid started.
But there have been calls to include the likes of GPs, pharmacists and retail workers in the scheme.
Minister Michael McGrath has defended the decision to single out healthcare workers.
"That is not to say that there are not thousands of other workers across the country who went above and beyond, who worked incredibly hard over the course of the pandemic to provide essential services to all of us.
"There are many thousands of those, but if you seek to go beyond core healthcare provision it gets incredibly difficult to know where to draw the line, and the cost of this would completely spiral."
