Mr. Damien McCallion:

On the second part of the question, GPs are currently involved in vaccinating the over 70 year olds and moving on to the second dose. We have worked out agreements with the GP leadership on GPs also assisting us with regard to very high-risk and high-risk patients. As I said, we do not have national disease registries so most people with the majority of conditions, although not all of them, are known to general practice. That scheduling is done locally and through GPs. If people are in doubt about that, the HSE website gives details of the criteria for inclusion in both the very high-risk and high-risk categories. People will be called. They do not need to contact their general practitioner or hospital as they will be called through that process.

We are still working through the model of how people will be assigned to pharmacists. As stated earlier, the model for pharmacies is still being developed in the context of the technology and the operating framework. We will also have to take into consideration the vaccine types that may be available because some of those could be challenging for pharmacists. We have done an expression of interest for pharmacies in the context of the numbers involved. That will be closing out soon.. We will be running a trial over the coming weeks to see how that will work in terms of the technological solution involved and to make sure that there will be a clear framework for operating. We will make a decision on what is the best time to activate pharmacies as a channel. At the moment, we clearly do not have the supply. Some of the decisions relating to the Janssen vaccine could influence thinking as well.