Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While I do not want to take from Deputy Lawless's time, I have an answer to the earlier question on the flu vaccine delay, which is two weeks. We are pretty much still on target, but there is a two-week delay.

As Deputy Lawless knows, NPHET is meeting tomorrow. I have explicitly asked the team to look at the profile of what is happening in Kildare and if there is a public health case to be made that it is the right thing to do and it is safe to accelerate the opening up, then that is exactly the recommendation I should get. I cannot pre-empt that and I do not want to create any false expectations. As we all know, the rate is very high in Kildare. The cut-off point for Ireland's green list was a prevalence of no more than five cases per 100,000 over the previous two weeks. Kildare was at nearly 200 per 100,000. The rate was very high. We also know that thanks to the incredible work of people in Kildare, that has been stopped and is now being reversed. The seven-day rates are much lower. This is a very difficult call for NPHET to make because while the measures are working, the question is whether they have reduced community transmission to a point where it is safe to relax the restrictions. We know the restrictions are working and inevitably, there will be risk of community transmission spiralling again if they are relaxed too early. I salute what the people of Kildare have done and I deeply empathise with the fact that they are now the only county being asked to comply with additional measures. If the restrictions can be lifted early, based on public health advice, they most certainly will be but we need to be very clear that our absolute focus is on saving lives, which is what the people of Kildare have done, getting the schools open, keeping businesses and our health care services open and avoiding much harsher measures.