Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to comment on the desire of people to have as much information as possible on the vaccine issue. I heard the Minister's answer earlier and I appreciate his bona fides on it. However, I think we are setting up a situation where we are being forced to manage a story that is ultimately in the control of the manufacturers. In many cases, open source data is a great solution in terms of communication with the public in other areas of public policy and we should adopt it here because it would give confidence to people. That open source data would also make transparent where are the issues and the blockages.

We cannot have enough coverage on the vaccine issue - more questions and answers, more briefings in the media, more opportunities for Professor MacCraith to be out and about and more up-to-date information. Even today, I see the Covid app has the details but it only has them updated to 1 March. The more updated information we have, the better.

I heard what the Minister said in regard to Germany and France’s approval of the AstraZeneca vaccine for older age groups. While NIAC is looking at that, if there is a date on which the Minister expects it to make that decision, I would appreciate that.

We discussed in detail countries such as Denmark, Austria and Malta, which have looked elsewhere, outside the EU arrangements. I would encourage the Minister to do that because we are getting many queries into our offices in that regard.

It was great to see the Minister at the mass vaccination centre in DCU in my constituency. The publicity around that has resulted in many calls for vaccination centres in other places. Can the Minister give us the percentage of people who will be vaccinated in those centres compared to those to be vaccinated in GP practices, given the vast majority will be vaccinated much closer to people's homes in their communities? If we knew that percentage, it would bring greater clarity.

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