Ms Emily O'Reilly:

No. That was not something we had concerns about. It was not something we investigated. I am not sure we even received complaints about it. The way I saw it, if we want to use an analogy, is that if three people are on site building a house it will get built in a year but if 100 people are on site building a house it will get built in a few months. Everything that had to do with the creation of a vaccine or the authorisation of a vaccine was speeded up because there were simply more resources being put at it. If normally on a Friday afternoon people would close the files and go off for the weekend people continued to work on the files over the weekend. I have found nothing to suggest that the authorisation was done rapidly. The European Medicines Agency has a good reputation. It is headed by an Irish person at present. I am sure it was under pressure . I have no doubt about that. From what I have seen, however, it did not cut corners on the authorisation of vaccines.