Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What other agenda could there be but to do that? In terms of holding a debate, as I stated, tomorrow the Joint Committee on Health will be dealing with the issue of vaccination. It is now expected that the European Medicines Agency will have an extraordinary general meeting on 21 December. That may bring forward the conditional market authorisation of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. That means administration could start at some stage after that. I do not have a specific timeline here. The House will return in January. I have no issue at all, by the way, if the Dáil wishes to come back for any length of time it wishes. This issue is not going away in the first two weeks of January. I can assure the House of that. The Moderna vaccine is currently pencilled in for a hearing by the European Medicines Agency on 12 January.

As far as the Government is concerned, on Friday there is a meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council. It is an important meeting that is being held virtually and will involve quite a lot of Ministers. That is something that should go ahead, in my view. It is the second such meeting since the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, so quite a number of Ministers will not be available, including the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly.

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