Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The people have every reason to be hopeful about the summer ahead. The number of people in hospital is below 100, the number in ICU is below 50 and cases are stable at approximately 400 or 500 a day, as I predicted they would be several months ago, without falling much below that given the level of reopening. We are ahead of ourselves in terms of where we thought we would be regarding hospitalisations and cases. For that reason, we can look forward to a very positive announcement on Friday regarding the reopening of society and economy and the phased return to international travel, events, etc.

The vaccine programme is going really well. Most people acknowledge that. I recognise all those involved, namely, the task force, the staff and the volunteers, for what they are doing. As we have always said, the only constraint is supply. It is still the case that once vaccines come into the country, 95% of them are in somebody's arm within a week. The targets we gave were always on the basis of the caveat relating to supply. That was made clear by the Taoiseach at the time. Where we stand now is that more than 2.5 million vaccine doses have been administered, and by the end of this week, more than half the adult population will have received at least one dose of the vaccine. That is very good progress. We expect to open the portal to people between 40 and 44 years of age in the coming days.

The targets, as I said, have always been subject to supplies arriving on time. If the supplies do not arrive on time, there is a risk we will miss those targets. That now appears to be likely. If we do miss the target, it will be because of factors beyond our control, namely, supplies of the vaccine. We hope to be able to provide revised targets as part of the announcement on Friday.

I do not know what NPHET was aware of or at what point in time. I have not had any direct engagement with the Chief Medical Officer, CMO, or anyone in NPHET for a couple of weeks. What I can say is that when I met the Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is in charge of vaccine supply, in Brussels last week, he indicated that there would be an issue with Johnson & Johnson supplies but was unable to come up with a number or tell me what it would be. It is only in recent days that anyone would have been aware of what the reduction in supplies was likely to be. We still do not know for sure, as the Deputy will know from the Minister for Health's comments this morning. If we do miss targets, I think we will only miss them by a few weeks because orders that were expected to arrive at the end of June might now arrive in early July. We are able to vaccinate 300,000 to 400,000 a week, so once we get the vaccines, we will get them out.

In the context of the AstraZeneca vaccine interval, I understand the case the Deputy has made on this and I am sympathetic to it. The most recent advice from NIAC, only in the past couple of days, is that the interval should remain at 12 weeks. That is its existing advice. If that changes, it changes. We know from the manufacturer that the interval can be as low as 56 days, but the advice from NIAC remains a 12-week interval.

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