Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Thank you. The first question is an excellent one, namely, when can we tell everybody, broadly speaking, when they should be in line to receive the vaccinations. There are two pieces to this. First, there is a piece of work which we are finalising at the moment, which is about the cohorts and what the cohorts will be after the cohorts that have been agreed to date. Once we have that, we will be in a position to give an indicative timeline but with caveats, as always, given these timelines can change when the supplies change. We hope to be in a position to do that soon because we know it is really important for people, particularly as we are asking people to stick with these very difficult level 5 measures, that they get a sense of when it is going to be their turn.

On the second question, what I can say is that I am deeply frustrated with the situation in regard to AstraZeneca. There are very serious conversations going on at a national level, at an international level and at the European Commission. I want the European Commission and the member states, including Ireland, to be made whole and for us to get the amount of vaccine that has been committed to and contracted.

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