James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It has to be stated in the House that the vaccination roll-out has been an enormous success in recent times. I am delighted to see the progress that has been made with the HSE and other partners that are working on it. I fully commend the officials working on the vaccination roll-out. I am very glad to see there are plans to ramp up weekly vaccinations to more than 400,000 per week in the very near future.

I will make a point to the Minister and the Ministers of State at the Department of Health, Deputies Anne Rabbitte and Mary Butler, who are with him today in the Chamber, around the vaccination bonuses that may come in the next number of weeks. The Cabinet will meet later in the week to make many important decisions on how we move into the next phase, perhaps the final phase before a full reopening of society, to get back to some degree of the normality we enjoyed up until the start of 2020.

I encourage Government to be very proactive in how they will implement such measures. As we know, in June we will definitely reach the tipping point in the level of the population that will be inoculated against the Covid-19 virus after receiving their first jab, which is very exciting and I am delighted to be able to say it. It is expected that more than 80% of the Irish adult population will have received their first dose by the end of June, which will make a remarkable difference to the level of hospitalisations and to those who have developed severe illnesses from Covid-19. It will, hopefully, help to reduce drastically the level of transmission as well.

I have a very simple question for the Minister about the vaccination bonus. Does he plan at any stage over the next month or two to alter that, when we arrive at a situation where we have met the targets that have been supplied, which is in excess of 80% being vaccinated?

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