The Taoiseach referred a number of times this morning to the success of the joint procurement agreement, JPA, for vaccines in Europe whereby Ireland receives 1.12% of European supplies. Could I ask him about the proposed purchase of 1 million doses of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine to be sourced directly from Romania? The purchase of this vaccine will be outside of the JPA. What oversight or allocation of resources is he considering to secure the integrity of the cold chain supply? This vaccine has to be kept at between -70°C and -90°C. There is a significant logistical difficulty in getting this done, not to mind the clinical validation of the supply. How does the Government propose to manage the process?

The President of Romania was anxious to help and has responded with this offer. The Danes did something similar in recent weeks and secured supplies, bearing in mind the logistics identified by Deputy Shanahan, which I had identified as having to be fulfilled in terms of the cold chain supply and the corresponding logistics. That work is ongoing between the HSE and departmental officials in respect of the follow-through and the agreement in principle arrived at on Friday.