I thank the Deputy. I would be happy to and I will revert to the Deputy on that. It is essential for people who do not have access to cars - many people simply do not have access to cars - that there is sufficient public transport to get to the vaccination centres. Sometimes that is required seven days a week. I would be happy to take the Deputy's point back to the HSE.

I thank the Deputy. It is certainly something I can discuss with the Minister for Transport, Deputy Ryan. The expert group reported in to me on 1 April and its report contained recommendations across a number of sectors. The way we are approaching it in government is that line Ministers are exploring what can be done in their sectors. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, and I, for example, are working on rapid testing, much of it in meat processing, while the Minister for Further …

I thank Deputy O'Rourke for his questions. In respect of a pilot for rapid testing, I commissioned a report on it and I support its findings. The Deputy will be aware that there are strongly-held views among highly reputable, well-informed people on both sides. Some people like Professor Ferguson believe there is a very substantial role for rapid testing to play while others believe there is significant risk because it can give people a false sense that they have had the equivalent of a negative PCR. They may then …

I thank Deputy Murphy for all of those points. On her last point, I am aware, as we all are, many people are resident in Ireland or want to come or return to Ireland. Twelve vaccines are being used for Covid-19 around the world and the European Medicines Agency, EMA, has authorised four of them. The exemption from hotel quarantine is only for those four vaccines. That is the public health advice we have at present but I will take the Deputy's point back. Much progress has been made on cohort 4 but I know, as all of…

I thank Deputy Devlin for his kind words. With regard to when people are deemed to be fully vaccinated, we will redouble our efforts on that. It is important the message gets out that, for example, people who are being vaccinated with AstraZeneca do not need to wait the 12 or 16 weeks and then plus two after their second dose, rather a number of weeks after the first dose and it is different for the different vaccines. We will redouble our efforts to make sure people know that. With regard to exemptions from hotel …

A pilot scheme is being rolled out for the ICT system and portal for pharmacists. I have taken this up with the HSE on numerous occasions, including this week. I believe there is a role for pharmacists to play in the vaccination roll-out. That is why we put a deal in place with the Irish Pharmacy Union, IPU, at the start of this process. To date, the people running the programme have said that the capacity has not yet been needed. Between the GPs, the vaccine centres and the HSE vaccination teams, there has been su…

I thank the Deputy for the question, and we were discussing that vaccination centre earlier. The issues raised regarding access to public transport are ones I have committed to taking back to the HSE. It is imperative that everyone can access these vaccine centres. Not everybody has access to a car, of course, so people must be able to access these centres using public transport. I will take this issue back to the HSE. One suggestion made earlier was that a shuttle bus service might help a lot with the situation. W…

I welcome the opportunity to update the House on Ireland’s Covid-19 vaccination programme. There has been much progress since we last discussed it. We hit the milestone of 1 million vaccines administered, and now more than 1.2 million vaccines have been administered. The vast majority of those living and working in long-term residential care have been fully vaccinated. First vaccine doses for healthcare workers have been substantially completed. Ireland is one of only a handful of EU countries that have achieved th…

I thank the Deputy for the solidarity and support in people sticking with the measures. We are in a slightly cautious space right now where more and more people believe that we are through it, whereas we are not. We are getting much closer so I thank the Deputy for his words on that. My latest figures are from the task force on Monday. I believe they were with him the following day. The figure I have for April is a total of just under 940,000 doses to be supplied. To address exactly what the Deputy was saying, howe…

My understanding is exactly that. There will be a detailed report, per vaccine, for everything that has arrived week by week.

It is an excellent question. In fact, yesterday India had in excess of 300,000 cases. I believe it is the highest number of daily cases for any country since Covid-19 arrived. It is absolutely heartbreaking. The team that advises the CMO met yesterday for this week's review. The deputy CMO and I have spoken directly about India and I expect a recommendation on it this week. To answer the Deputy's point, I am concerned about it. When the deputy CMO and I spoke on this yesterday, the Indian variant had not yet been c…

I thank the Deputy. For reasons we all understand, we take North-South co-operation seriously, no more so than on this issue. The closer we can have to an all-island approach to this, the better. I will have to see Mr. Swann's comments for myself. However, there is a good and constructive ongoing relationship. Mr. Swann and I recently held a health sectorial meeting for the North-South Ministerial Council, something that had not been in place for many years. We are co-operating on data sharing and Covid. It would n…

I thank the Deputy for his kind words on the programme and his questions. There are several cohorts which are either fully or partly using AstraZeneca, including cohort 2 which is healthcare workers of all ages. They will be getting their second dose. NIAC has put a 16-week interval in place for people under 60 with no underlying conditions. Quite a number of people in cohort 4 have had AstraZeneca as well and NIAC has said that regardless of their age, their second dose should be administered after 12 weeks. The s…

At this point we must wait to see whether the vaccines come in. While the Deputy quite rightly points out that there have been very significant volumes moving around, they are only moving by a week or two. Thus, for April, May and June we are due to receive just over 800,000 doses of AstraZeneca and while the deliveries are moving by a week here and there, the task force, HSE and the Department are working very closely with the company to ensure the total volumes do still arrive.

I thank all three Deputies for their very supportive comments on the vaccine programme and all those working on it. Deputy McGuinness asked, as several Deputies have, what the position would be for those who have already received the first dose of the mRNA vaccines. If NIAC recommends to me that we extend the four-week interval to eight weeks or 12 weeks, for example, what will happen to those who have already received their first dose and therefore know when their second dose is due? It is my position that those w…

I thank the Deputy for her questions. She asked about the multiple changes causing confusion. The advice we are getting in a very fast-moving programme is changing. The advice we are getting from the EMA is changing. The advice we get from NIAC is changing. The delivery schedules we get are changing. We have a choice. We can listen to the experts and adjust our programme to ensure it follows the clinical advice which requires change, or we can ignore that clinical advice and run a vaccination programme against the …

Would the Deputy mind sending me on the details? I will ask the relevant officials directly.

I thank the Deputy for the various questions. I will answer the last question first. Several people have come to me with the exact same question on those over 60 with a history of blood clotting and I put it to public health officials. I want to be careful not to give medical advice as I am not a medic but the answer I got back was that AstraZeneca is safe regardless of any such history. That is the very clear advice I got back. If the Deputy would like, I would be more than happy to revert to her with a written po…

I thank the Deputies for their support for the vaccine programme. I will feed in Deputy O’Dowd’s question on the Drogheda Institute of Further Education. Deputies Pádraig O’Sullivan and O’Connor both referenced rapid testing. I appointed the expert group and launched the report some time ago. It is being embraced by various Departments, including the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. We are doing tens of thousands of rapid tests a week now. The Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Inn…

There is a substantial amount of money in the budget for this year in various different places. There is a contingency fund, which is a central Government fund, and then there is a significant amount in the health budget. An awful lot of the activities involved in the vaccination programme are being funded out of that such as testing, tracing, genome sequencing and pop-up walk-in centres. The Deputy makes an excellent point on subsequent years. I have no doubt that one of the line items that will be in the health b…