James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for being here. On the issue of vaccinations, I want to use this opportunity to highlight the extreme frustration being felt by many people who were expecting to be vaccinated in the past number of weeks. Our office has been inundated with calls from people who want to know the status of their vaccination and when they will get the vaccine. I understand there was some concern in the east Cork municipal district - the Midleton local electoral area to be precise - about that. I ask the Minister to focus on that area. Out of respect for the officials who I know are under enormous pressure I did not want to put down parliamentary questions as per the request from the Department.

We spent a lot of time developing the Covid app which people could use to indicate if they were or were not symptomatic but that app could be utilised much more than it is currently now that we are trying to figure our way out of Covid over the coming months. Hopefully, we will be in a situation by the end of the year where the worst of the pandemic will be behind us. We could utilise that app and put proper planning in place in the next number of weeks when a larger quantity of vaccine will be available to people to inform them exactly when they can expect to be vaccinated. We have seen that being done in other countries and there is a real and interesting opportunity for Ireland to do that, as the leading technology country in Europe. Some of the largest multinational companies in the technology sector are located a couple of hundred metres from where we are sitting in this Dáil so there is no reason we could not lead the fight here on that. I would like the Minister to comment on that.

I want to pay tribute to the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, who is doing an enormous amount of work in her portfolio. She deserves great credit because she has been a shining light in this Government. I wish her every success in her role, which is critically important to the older people in our community.

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