-----and the Deputy is doing it on a consistent basis.

Sinn Féin's policy on nurse education is quite frankly incoherent.

That is an extraordinary statement to make. The Deputy is an extraordinary propagandist and a populist. He has led people up the hill without levelling with them about the facts and what they could expect. The Deputy's behaviour in this dispute has not been great either because he knows the facts and the legal realities. The only party which has stood up to the plate here are those in government on behalf of the taxpayer. The Government has come forward with statutory redundancy - the Deputy has never acknowledged …

The Deputy has just summed it up. His role is to blame Government, full stop. Ignore all the realities, ignore all the legal frameworks and all the challenges. His job is to blame Government and, perhaps, to undermine the trade union involved as well. There is a bit of that in his operation as well. I have picked that up during the course of this. Very often, the Deputy is not very strongly supportive of some of what might be considered mainstream trade unions. There is an element of that in his strategy as well. T…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. First of all, it is a phenomenon we have not come across that there is a higher incidence of Covid-19 in close proximity to testing centres, but I will ask the Chief Medical Officer to investigate this and give his comments and his perspectives on it, and those of the HSE personnel involved. Testing and contact tracing is a key component of the Government's strategy in terms of combating Covid. We now have an all-island capacity to test up to 126,000 people per week, which…

I certainly will. As yet, there has been no indication of a correlation between the location of testing centres and a higher incidence of Covid-19. I will ask the Chief Medical Officer to consider this and I will check with the HSE about facilities for visitors at the site itself. People generally tend to arrive and leave again, but I will ask the HSE to take the Deputy's concerns about protocols on board. I have no doubt that the issues raised by the Deputy have been articulated to him by local residents. This is …

The Government considered the Meenan report and the law of tort around medical negligence today. The report recommends that we pursue a vaccine compensation scheme, the development and production of which the Minister for Health and the Minister for Justice are working on. Regarding indemnity, the content of advance purchase agreements, including provisions relating to liability and indemnity, are negotiated with vaccine suppliers by the European Commission and its negotiating team, acting on behalf of member state…

I have just said that we considered and adopted the Meenan report and we are working on a vaccine compensation scheme. I said also to the Deputy that the advance purchase agreements, which the European Commission entered into on behalf of member states, and the indemnifications and liabilities are open-ended.

They require member states to provide legal support, costs and payments of claims arising from any damages associated with administration of the vaccine. It should be remembered that we are trying to get vaccines to people. As to what has been achieved, there are two ways of looking at this. We can always undermine and seek to pick holes in this, or we can say this is far better than anything ever attempted before in the history of states working together. Until now, the pharmaceuticals would have produced them on …

I know that Deputy Connolly wants me to say what I am not supposed to say, as if I am not allowed say these things.

No. I just have to say that. As for the six advance purchase agreements, and as I have said before, there is Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, BioNTech-Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur and CureVac. Those are the ones in respect of which the Commission has approved contracts. A seventh may also come along, but balanced decisions have to be taken in that regard. What was the prioritisation? It was to have a safe vaccine produced and developed that we can administer to the population to try to get herd immunity from Covid-19, whic…

It is Christmastime.

First of all, I point out to the House that at no stage have I got personal on this issue.

I certainly have not. Through the Chair, I did not interrupt anybody.

The least Deputies are entitled to is the courtesy of being allowed to make our points. Perhaps the most important thing we could do today is to agree to de-politicise the entire vaccine issue. Brian MacCraith, the chairman of the high-level task force in relation to the vaccination programme, will appear tomorrow before the Joint Committee on Health. The central theme of the strategy that will be launched today by the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, along with the Chief Medical Officer, the head of the HSE a…

What other agenda could there be but to do that? In terms of holding a debate, as I stated, tomorrow the Joint Committee on Health will be dealing with the issue of vaccination. It is now expected that the European Medicines Agency will have an extraordinary general meeting on 21 December. That may bring forward the conditional market authorisation of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. That means administration could start at some stage after that. I do not have a specific timeline here. The House will return in January.…

Yes. On Brexit, I have to point out that there was a fairly extensive debate on Brexit in the context of the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2020. That involved various Departments and areas and several Ministers came before the House over a two-week period.

I thank Deputy McDonald for raising the issue. I agree that the news last week of a conclusion to the negotiations on the protocol and the withdrawal agreement was very good news. Both sides deserve commendation in terms of the constructive way that they engaged. The indications were good prior to signing off on that agreement which was important in terms of the experience on the post-Brexit island of Ireland. The fact that both sides are still in negotiations is a good sign. It gives me greater hope than I had las…

Yes, we may very well be. It depends on what happens on 21 December. The European Council discussed the matter last week. We made it very clear that there would be no pressure on the European Medicines Agency in making its decision, although we were conscious that the FDA's decision on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was coming sooner. Then there are the logistics of transporting the vaccine. There is every possibility now that it may indeed be the case that some people may get vaccinated before the end of the year.

The strategy and sequencing of who gets the vaccine first is a live document. Some of it will depend on the availability, manufacturing and volumes of vaccines that will come into the country at particular stages. As I said yesterday morning, January and February will see limited supplies, relatively speaking, although I hope we should have enough to get all our nursing home residents and staff vaccinated. I said last week that the national immunisation advisory committee was involved in this decision and it is a b…