Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is encouraging to see Ireland’s booster the campaign ramping up with more pharmacists, GPs and, indeed, HSE staff coming on board in a national effort to offer people a third vaccination before the Omicron variant becomes dominant. International evidence suggests a third dose of the mRNA vaccine offers significant protection against the Omicron variant. The national immunisation advisory committee, NIAC, recommendation is that every adult who has received the one-shot Janssen vaccine can be offered the mRNA three months after their initial inoculation, which is very welcome. However, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s cannot access the booster campaign. Many of them followed public health advice in good faith and took the Janssen vaccine at the early stages of the initial vaccination programme. Will the Minister raise this situation with the Minister for Health and ask that an exemption be considered to the operational aspects of the campaign to allow those age cohorts access to vaccination either through their pharmacists or GPs?

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