Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, the Minister of State, all in the Department and, moreover, the front-line staff who are helping to deliver vaccinations at huge speed at the moment. It is massively appreciated. I will speak briefly about mandatory hotel quarantine. It had a real high-value purpose in the early weeks of this year when there was a major risk of new strains of Covid coming into the country. The Minister has evolved and refined it in recent times but I am still concerned that the Sinopharm vaccine, which many Irish citizens domiciled as ex-pats in Abu Dhabi have received, has not been recognised in Ireland as a legitimate vaccine for exemption from the mandatory quarantine period. That urgently needs to be looked at.

In Ennis, our Covid vaccination centre at the West County Hotel opened yesterday. It is going fantastically except that there are long queues of people waiting. There needs to be a refined way of rolling it out, perhaps by waiting in the car park area. There is a no seating area about which many elderly people are complaining. That is just an administrative issue I hope the Minister will communicate within his Department.

The National Ambulance Service has been tasked with getting vaccines to the infirm and those confined to bed. However, Margaret Morgan from Kilmurry McMahon, a woman in Clare aged 101, is one of about 1,500 who are still a little uncertain about how this is working. She is one of the oldest citizens in our country and is still awaiting her vaccine. I ask the Department officials to put her out of her anguish. Her family have been on the airwaves all week trying to find out what is happening for their mother. I do not expect answers today but maybe the Minister of State, within the chain of command, can try to rectify that for her.

On church and religious services, others have made the point that we need at look at churches for what they are. They are large, vaulted buildings. Most days of the year people in them are socially isolated anyway. Very few people are going to Mass, in the traditional sense, as they would have in years gone by. We urgently need to look at them in the next tranche of reopening.

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