Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It will be in the coming weeks. I have discussed this at length with the HSE. I want to see pharmacists playing a more prominent role in this. I know they are ready to go and we have had an agreement in place with them for a very long time. The IT systems and portals for the pharmacists are being piloted with a number of community pharmacists right now. As I said earlier, the view from those in the vaccine programme is that the capacity they bring has not been required yet. However, the volumes are increasing very significantly and I want to see them brought in very quickly. At this point the answer is that it will be in the coming weeks.

I fully take the Deputy's point about the HSE still working out the detail of administration of the vaccine to pregnant women. By definition, this is a time-limited group of people. I will take that back to the HSE. The Deputy said this was announced without detail, but to be fair to the HSE, while we announced the NIAC recommendation, we need to leave a bit of time for the HSE to work it through.

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