Dr. Ronan Glynn:

I have no doubt that if there are opportunities to do things in Northern Ireland that are not available here that there will be a minority of people who avail of them. Equally however, while the North is ahead of us, it is moving in a conservative manner as well. We are not that far behind in terms of our measures. I know that every week feels like an eternity to people with what is in place but in overall terms we are not that far behind. If our vaccination programme rolls out as it should over the coming weeks we will catch up as far as our level of protection is concerned. If we can avoid an increase in incidence over the coming weeks we will be in a position that is very similar so that we will again have an all-island epidemiological unit as opposed to two jurisdictions.