Stephen Donnellly has said that 24 hour vaccine centres could potentially be rolled out but hinted that it may not be necessary given current scope within the rollout programme.
And the Health Minister has insisted that young people will not be bumped up the queue to receive their Covid jab.
Speaking on Ireland AM Minister Donnelly said: "The capacity within the vaccination centres coupled with the capacity within GPs, remember we have pharmacists as well and I'm hoping to see them play a bigger role, suggests that we wouldn't need to run the vaccines centres 24/7.
“Ideally you wouldn’t want people having to go in at 2, 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning.
"If we needed to run them late at night, early in the morning, then we can do that.
“If we need to run the vaccine centres 24 hours a day to meet the target of getting the vaccines out as quickly as possible, it is absolutely something we can do.
"But we all know that it's been very bumpy and we had some very serious downward revisions from AstraZeneca, for example, which made it more difficult.
"Then we got an extra big shipment in from Pfizer which we weren't expecting."
The Health Minister also said that Ireland should be in a position to offer 80% of adults at least one Covid jab by June slightly below the 82% pledged by Taoiseach Micheal Martin.
The Minister added: "As things stand today, if we get the vaccines in according to schedule, and if we keep getting them out as soon as they come into the country, then we then we will be at around 80% at the end of June."
