Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is no surprise that the rate of Omicron has doubled in the last two days, meaning it will become the dominant variant by the weekend. There is a real urgency about getting the boosters out. On Tuesday, I called for the age restrictions to be lifted for boosters. It seemed like that was going to be done yesterday. An announcement was made that there would be no age restrictions applying to GPs and to pharmacists, which was a very welcome development. Unfortunately, that was not the case and pharmacists have been told today they have now to go back on that and they are only allowed to provide the boosters to those over 50. The issue about that, of course, is that a flood of bookings was made yesterday with pharmacists from people of all ages and pharmacists now have to tell those people their appointments are no longer valid. It makes no sense whatsoever to do this.

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