Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly has said that the latest advice from officials on Ireland's vaccination rollout means that the target of having every adult fully protected by September can be "brought forward a few weeks".
Donnelly was speaking to RTE's News at One in the aftermath of the Taoiseach's announcement that the reopening of indoor hospitality would be delayed.
When asked by Bryan Dobson about the latest advice and how it would affect the targets, Mr Donnelly said:
"I asked NIAC for a review of their decision on Janssen and AstraZeneca. If the supplies arrive as anticipated, we'll now have several hundred thousand doses available so that we can jab people quicker.
"Broadly, we were still on track to have the entire adult population fully vaccinated by the end of September - we will now see that coming forward several weeks."
Mr Donnelly also expanded on why exactly the Government opted to postpone the reopening.
"It will come as a big blow to hospitality, we know some were expecting a delay but what NPHET has said is we need to pause it for now, but we can move to a model that's already been successfully used in several EU countries like Austria, Germany and Czechia - they're all using some version of this.
"We got this advice last night, we made the decision early this morning. We will now listen to the sectors now and see how we can progress.
"What we want to do is by July 19 have a way forward that is agreed with the industry.
"There are questions of responsibility and compliance and even how you do it.
"We only got this advice last night, now we will listen to the sectors and look at how it's been rolled out in other industries."
