Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their questions. I will run through them quickly to try and get to all four.

I take Deputy Flaherty's point on wanting to get back to normal life as quickly as possible. We all want it. We are all desperate for it for ourselves and our communities, and our business communities are all desperate for it. However, we still have to proceed with care. One of the reasons Ireland is doing so well, our vaccine programme is going so well, we have one of the lowest virus levels in Europe and we have the strongest measures against the importation of variants is we have approached all of this from a safety and public health perspective. Even though it is harder now than ever, as the weather gets better, as case numbers are lower and as more people get vaccinated, we still must proceed with care and the caution that our public experts are still urging.

In response to Deputy Higgins's point, if she wants to give me the details of a clinic that is refusing to administer vaccines, I ask her to let me know because all of the patients from that GP practice must, of course, be vaccinated in their local community. The question on the portal is one I can take back.

A question Deputies Higgins and Christopher O'Sullivan both asked was around reassurance for AstraZeneca. What we can do is keep asking the experts to go on the radio and television. There is a great deal of advice online on gov.ie and the HSE and NIAC's own page. The reports underpinning the advice that comes in to me, and indeed the letters from the deputy CMO, are all available online. I will revert to Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan regarding the west Cork vaccination centres.

In response to Deputy Colm Burke on the maternity visitations - it is something that has been raised with me on several occasions - I am aware that for mums and their partners, it is important that they can get in, particularly sometimes when things may not be going as well as we would want. These are decisions being made locally by the maternity hospitals. They are obviously putting the safety of mums and babies first and they are aware that we want to relax those restrictions as quickly as possible.

Finally, the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, will take back the points on the Defence Forces and the housebound.

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