Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In response to Deputy McAuliffe, the news about the walk-in test centres is good. I echo the Deputy's message, which is for people living within 5 km of these centres to turn up and get PCR tests. It is only one measure. There is no silver bullet but it is an extra measure to target and find this virus. It is to support people, communities and geographic areas where people need this support so that we can find this virus, treat people, isolate the virus and get the case numbers back down. Regarding deliveries, we expect that by the end of this month, which will be in about five days, that we will have received in excess of 1.1 million vaccines, with 1 million in April, 1 million in May and 1 million in June. Those are the delivery schedules that we are working to. I share the Deputy's view that there are many key workers. We would love nothing more than to be able to vaccinate all of the worthy groups that have been referred to by many Deputies throughout this morning's debate.

I recognise Deputy Flaherty's point. I agree with the Deputy that what we are asking of people is really tough. People are exhausted. They have had enough. They need to know what the path out of this will be. We are asking people to stick with these measures, even though they are hard, for the time being to give the vaccination programme a bit more time and to get the most vulnerable protected so that we can begin this path back to normal living.

See this speech in context