Dr. Colm Henry:

I will respond briefly to the first question. As I explained earlier, for the housebound the system is working closely with the GP community, which is best placed to identify the people who cannot travel to a GP surgery for the over 70 years vaccine scheme. We have not been able to approach it with the same strict age-based incremental approach as we did with those who go to the GP surgery simply because the vaccine is a multi-dose vial. The National Ambulance Service has to deliver it and the vaccine, once reconstituted, must be used within five or six hours. Some of it is somewhat geographically based in the sense that the National Ambulance Service has to assess who needs it in a particular area and schedule the vaccinations on a particular day. It must factor into this not just the administration but also the lifespan of the vaccine after it has been reconstituted and the need to monitor the patient for at least 15 minutes after the vaccine. We urge anybody who has not yet heard to inform his or her GP. The GPs are informing us in turn of those patients who cannot go to their primary care centres for vaccination. We will leave nobody behind, and that has been our commitment from the beginning.