Professor Brian MacCraith:

The information available to us changes week by week as circumstances change. As Mr. Goodman mentioned earlier, we have envisaged how the different pharmaceutical companies' vaccines will be delivered on a quarterly basis across next year but nothing is confirmed until conditional marketing authorisation is granted. That is why we do not have final details, even up to the end of this year.

It is important to state that, overall, all the questions being asked by the Deputy and her colleagues are valid. Not all the answers have been established at this stage and, even as we speak, teams of people in other parts of this building we are in are working away on developing those answers regarding the most immediate issues and planning for the longer term issues, as each solution is arrived at.

Moving to the supply of vaccines, we have indicative schedules from several of the candidates which we expect to be first out of the traps in respect of getting approval, but nothing has been confirmed in writing. We have taken the view that we should be honest with the Irish public in respect of providing certainty, when we have absolute details. Speculating and providing just general indications is not something we are sure is always helpful. We are very happy, therefore, to take all the questions we are receiving and to try to provide the detailed answers which are available now and to be as helpful as possible. This is the first version of the implementation plan, however, and there will be many versions of it as we work through it.