Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

At present, 90% of those aged 60 to 69 have started vaccination. For those aged 50 to 59, 90% have registered and almost 80% have started vaccination. Almost 100% of citizens over the age of 70 are now fully vaccinated. It was an extraordinary challenge but it has been a huge success. I often say that when a challenge is thrown down to Irish people, they like it and they respond. We have fantastic people in our medical service, including our GPs and their staff, people in the health service and the Minister himself. The Minister took some stern criticism all along, as Senator Keogan said, but he took it on the chin, kept doing the right thing and kept his head down. We can now see this is turning out to be a wonderful success. It is a tribute to the Minister and all the people in the health service.

I regret that when he tried to commence the debate here on the possibility of vaccinating students it was shot down. After last weekend, when we saw how young people in particular want to get back out and return to college, maybe that was the one debate we should have had.

I am very confident that the pace of vaccination will continue. Very shortly, almost 3 million people will have had their first vaccination. It is a real, good, success story. One has to think about all that has happened, including issues with delays, supply and, in recent times, IT and the cyberattack. Despite that, the Minister, health service workers and doctors continued to keep going. I say well done. The Minister might give us some explanation on how the second dose will work out for certain categories of people as regards term. Again, I ask the Minister to comment on the vaccination of students because that is a very important issue we need to tackle.