I want to start on a very positive note on the vaccine roll-out. The uptake of the vaccine has been very good and logistically it has gone very well also. There will be kinks and vulnerabilities in its implementation. One of the vulnerabilities is the cohort of those aged over 60. A cohort of nearly 450,000 is in that bracket. It seems counter-intuitive that those people have been left vulnerable. For example, I will be fully vaccinated by next week but somebody that is 20 years older than me will possibly not be fully vaccinated for another five weeks. How concerned is the Tánaiste and what will the Government do to try to address the anomaly and the vulnerability relating to that cohort?

This is a significant concern at the moment. It is an issue many of my constituents are raising with me and I imagine Deputy Kenny has had the same experience. What I can confirm is that the Government has agreed to reduce the gap between the first dose and the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine from 12 weeks to eight weeks. We cannot reduce the gap to anything shorter than that, as the licence and the manufacturer state there should be a 56 day gap or more between the first two doses. We are doing that, but it will take a few weeks to operationalise it and it does depend on supplies. We anticipate having all of the people in that cohort fully vaccinated probably around the middle of July and certainly by the end of July. That decision has been taken and it will happen.

Vaccine registrations are going to open on Sunday for people aged 35 to 39. We expect next month to get further advice from the national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, and the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, on heterologous vaccination, that is the mixing of vaccine doses – getting one type for the first dose and a different type for the second dose. It does appear that the efficacy of that approach is very good, but the data on safety is limited at the moment and we expect to have more information next month.