Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Murphy for all of those points. On her last point, I am aware, as we all are, many people are resident in Ireland or want to come or return to Ireland. Twelve vaccines are being used for Covid-19 around the world and the European Medicines Agency, EMA, has authorised four of them. The exemption from hotel quarantine is only for those four vaccines. That is the public health advice we have at present but I will take the Deputy's point back.

Much progress has been made on cohort 4 but I know, as all of us do, that some people are finding it difficult to get the answer they want quickly. In terms of the progress made, to date, more than 200,000 vaccines have been administered to cohort 4 and this is a big week. This week, 40,000 to 50,000 vaccines are targeted for cohort 4. A huge number of people in cohort 4 have been vaccinated and are being vaccinated this week. It is a big week.

In the first instance, people should be able to get an answer, either from their GP or treating hospital. The approach is that if a person has an underlying condition and is in treatment with a hospital group, that hospital group should be able to vaccinate him or her and should be contacting that person to tell him or her to come in to be vaccinated. In the majority of cases, that is exactly what is happening. Some people have the same underlying conditions but are not in active treatment with one of these hospitals, and in those cases the GPs can make the decision to vaccinate them.

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