Mr. Alan Shatter:

I never do talk about issues in respect of which I am not privy to the full information. I do know as a fact that one of those groups has also been banned by the Dutch Government because it is concerned about misuse of funds, but I am not in a position to comment on that.

Finally, and this will be only four sentences, I wish to address the issue of vaccines. I am chairman of the Irish branch of Magen David Adom, which is the emergency medical response group in Israel.

Any suggestion the Israeli Government deprived Palestinians of the Covid-19 vaccine is complete nonsense. At an early stage, the Israeli Government offered vaccines. The Palestinian National Authority turned them down having initially said it would accept them. Then, when months passed and the Palestinian National Authority had not yet acquired vaccines, the organisation I represent in Ireland, Magen David Adom, vaccinated 120,000 Palestinians on the border between the West Bank and Israel proper. Interestingly, one of the issues raised in the separate Amnesty International report on the Palestinian territory is that "The health ministry in the West Bank [this is the Palestinian National Authority health ministry] confirmed on 2 March [2021] that it had distributed about 1,200 Covid-19 vaccines to high-ranking officials rather than to health workers." That is just one of the difficulties that arises in dealing with issues within the Palestinian territories.