It is encouraging to see Ireland’s booster the campaign ramping up with more pharmacists, GPs and, indeed, HSE staff coming on board in a national effort to offer people a third vaccination before the Omicron variant becomes dominant. International evidence suggests a third dose of the mRNA vaccine offers significant protection against the Omicron variant. The national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, recommendation is that every adult who has received the one-shot Janssen vaccine can be offered the mRNA three months after their initial inoculation, which is very welcome. However, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s cannot access the booster campaign. Many of them followed public health advice in good faith and took the Janssen vaccine at the early stages of the initial vaccination programme. Will the Minister raise this situation with the Minister for Health and ask that an exemption be considered to the operational aspects of the campaign to allow those age cohorts access to vaccination either through their pharmacists or GPs?

I thank Deputy Devlin for raising this issue and for acknowledging the importance of the booster vaccination programme. I can tell the House that, yesterday, 45,000 booster vaccines were administered, which was the single biggest number to date in the booster programme. Those between the ages of 40 and 49 will start to receive the booster vaccine no later than the week commencing 27 December.

We are concerned about the specific issue raised by the Deputy about people who have received the single-shot Janssen vaccine because of the waning effectiveness over time. I know the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, has raised this specific issue with the CMO, Dr. Holohan, and with the NIAC. While they are approved to receive the booster vaccine, it has not been suggested to us they should be prioritised ahead of older cohorts. That is where things stand but we expect to receive a reply to that shortly.