TAOISEACH Micheál Martin has confirmed that every potentially vulnerable person in Ireland will have been vaccinated against Covid-19 by mid-May.
Ireland is on the verge of the securing a deal with Johnson & Johnson, which is expected to secure over 2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in the coming weeks.
Martin said the vaccines are "the light at the end of the tunnel" and that they will "enable us to have a better quality of life" as he provided some hope for Ireland's future.
He added that the Government is aiming to administer around 1.2 million vaccines doses per month in April, May and June.
"A combination of more volumes of Pfizer, more Moderna, less AstraZeneca and then Johnson & Johnson, so a combination of all those together gives us about 1.2 million per month," the Taoiseach said.
"So you move that forward to the end of June and you're looking at potentially up to one and a half million people fully dosed.
"We will have all over 70s, the two doses done by the middle of May, so that means the riskiest age cohort of the population will have been vaccinated and that's good for us.
"The target date is that by September we'll have the majority of the population vaccinated.
"We're vaccinating as soon as we get the vaccines into the country and we can do no more than that."
On Thursday, the HSE unveiled the vaccine plan for the next week, which included 109,900 scheduled doses to be administered between next Monday and Friday.
36,000 doses had been arranged for people over the age of 60, and will administered at around 240 GPs around the country.
62,000 doses will also be given to healthcare workers, while 11,900 doses will be given to long term care facilities.
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