Labour leader Alan Kelly has described the Government's decision on delaying reopening of indoor hospitality as chaos and ministers did not know advice on vaccinations from the National Immunisation Advisory Committee.
"It's embarrassing ... It was chaos ... unacceptable", Deputy Kelly said, where Cabinet ministers "either didn't understand what was in front of them" or "they were misled. It's either one or the other."
Speaking during Leaders' Questions in the Dáil, Mr Kelly said he would roll out the Janssen vaccine to 18 to 29 year-olds as soon as possible and allow pharmacists to administer the vaccine.
Labour leader @alankellylabour says he is going to offer the Government advice. He says from Monday the J&J #Covid19 vaccine should be offered to any 18-29-year-olds who will take it 'and you will have queues out the door'
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) July 1, 2021
Live blog: https://t.co/IyArcIvpHm pic.twitter.com/RvnIXX6LmC
He said the projections underpinning the Government's measures on reopening indoor dining do not factor in "900,000 single dose Janssen vaccines" and "approximately two million AstraZeneca vaccines" which are available.
In response, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that "we still don't know for sure" the likely impact of the changes that NIAC has permitted in relation to vaccines.
Those calculations are "being done today", Mr Varadkar said.
He added: "[We] are saying to people who aren't vaccinated, mostly younger people, but not all, that you're the most vulnerable. And we're asking you for the next couple of weeks - until we get you vaccinated - to avoid socialising and congregating indoors."
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Communions and confirmations
Primate of All Ireland and the Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin described the Government's stance on communions and confirmations as a "complete reversal" of an earlier decision made on the issue.
Mr Martin also criticised the way that the communication of this new position was handled by the Government and said that it was "very disrespectful how this was done".
While such ceremonies are not prohibited under the guidelines, the Government's advice is that they "should not take place at this time".
The advice says: "It is advised that religious ceremonies such as Baptisms, First Holy Communions and Confirmations should not take place at this time. Further advice will follow on resumption of these ceremonies when it is safe to do so."
Speaking on RTÉ's News at one, Mr Martin said: "There is indeed a lot of confusion here and a lot of frustration and deep disappointment and indeed anger.
"We've been deluged with calls from parishes and I know that priests and others have been extremely disappointed by this reversal of the position that was written to us from the Taoiseach's office from the very beginning of June that said that in line with the gradual reopening of society from 5 July these ceremonies could take place.
"And so, there's been a huge amount of preparation with the children in their schools with their families."
Earlier today, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said that Chief Medical Office Dr Tony Holohan did not recommend cancelling confirmations because they were not supposed to be happening anyway.
He added: "People who are not vaccinated are not supposed to gather indoors... I appreciate it is a big disappointment."
Covid projections from CMO 'sobering and quite stark'
Earlier, Sinn Féin's health spokesperson David Cullinane said the different projections laid out by the Chief Medical Officer yesterday regarding the situation with Covid-19 were "sobering and quite stark".
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Cullinane said these projections and assumptions have to be taken seriously, particularly given the difficulties the Delta variant is causing in the UK.
However, he said it is the last-minute planning by the Government that angers people, and the Government has left the hospitality sector without any plan.
He said the Government's job is to look at every eventuality and it has been known for the last number of weeks that the National Public Health Emergency Team had the potential to suggest pausing reopening.
"We don't have time to be wasting weeks and months," he said.
"We need to be making decisions as quickly as possible because we know speed is really important when you're dealing with a variant where transmissibility is much higher than other variants of this disease."
Vaccine figures
The HSE today published its latest data on Covid-19 vaccination in Ireland.
It had been unable to publish daily updates due to the cyber attack which first affected large numbers of HSE systems in May. The last date for which figures were available until today on this dashboard was 11 May.
According to the latest figures, as of 29 June, 4,109,474 vaccine doses have been administered in Ireland.
Of these, 2,443,921 have been first vaccine doses. A further 1,593,517 have been second doses.A total of 72,036 one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines have also been administered in the country.
