Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy's questions are absolutely appropriate to the people he represents. The short answer on the vaccination centres is that they were operational decisions of the HSE based on population analysis. If it is the case that a second, bigger vaccination centre is appropriate for Donegal, it will be set up. I will give a commitment to the Deputy that I will ask the HSE after this debate to take a second look at Donegal specifically and see if it is warranted. The point the Deputy made in his question, however, is the answer. Every GP clinic and every pharmacy will have the opportunity, and they might not all opt in, to be part of the vaccination programme. Nearly every GP clinic is part of it. Every town and most villages across the country will have options. Most of us will never go to one of these mass vaccination centres. We will simply go to our local pharmacy or GP, get one or two jabs in the arm and then go home. That will be it, and particularly through April as we seek to scale up to approximately 250,000 per week. That will be much more common, so it will not be the case that people will have to travel from Inishowen to Letterkenny or further south.

With regard to the GPs, I know they have been contacting Deputies and have been on the media. There is frustration. Part of the frustration is because it is a three-week programme. Some GPs got their vaccines in the first and second week while GPs quite close to them are only getting them this week. That was due to various operational reasons. It caused a certain amount of frustration, and that is partly unavoidable. There has been repeated contact with the entire GP cohort across the country, but I understand why a GP would say that the GP down the road got the vaccines two weeks ago while that GP's patients are still waiting.

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