A number of large-scale COVID-19 vaccination centres are to be set up across the country as part of the rollout to over-70s.
The first will be at DCU where around 120 smaller GP practices will come together to administer the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.
Over-85s will be offered the vaccines from February 15th and the majority of them will be able to go to their own doctor's surgery.
It comes as thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, originally set aside for the elderly, will be administered to frontline healthcare workers in the coming weeks.
The vaccine is arriving into the country this weekend, with Health Minister Stephen Donnelly confirming that 21,600 doses will be delivered.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast with Susan Keogh today, Dr Denis McCauley from the Irish Medical Organisation said there is a "relative shortage in supply" of the three vaccines.
He said the main issues with the Pfizer and Moderna inoculations is that they are "more delicate to handle" and harder to transport.
However, he outlined that there is a plan in place that just needs to be implemented.
"The plan is that 70% of all GP practices will be able to have the vaccine delivered directly to them," Dr McCauley said.
"But the important thing on top of that is that 70% represents a significantly higher amount of the patients in Ireland.
"I would say well over 80 to 85% of patients who are 85 will go to their GPs to get the vaccine.
"They will still ring and make the appointment with their GP as planned, it's just that we have to work harder to deliver this slightly more technical vaccine to them."
A nurse pulls a dose from a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vial. Photo by Ken Ruinard / staff/USA Today Network/Sipa USADr McCauley said that for people over 70 whose GP has a small practice that may not be able to administer the immunisation due to technical issues, the patient and doctor will go to a larger practice for the vaccine.
This would work as a type of buddy system, he explained.
"The GP will ring the GP with the bigger practice and say, 'When you're getting your vaccine, can I buddy up to you?', and will go and that's what will happen," he said.
"A lot of these smaller practices tend to be concentrated in the city, for instance, there's 120 GPs in Dublin that have 2,000 over-85s so you're talking about, in reality, very small amounts.
"But if you're a patient in that practice that's still important to you.
"You will probably go to a centralised area like a hub, there's a plan for those 120 practices in Dublin to go to DCU probably not next week but the week after and the GP and patient will go to that type of infrastructure."
That means people will receive the vaccine from their GP not in the doctor's practice but in the hub.
Dr McCauley added that people who may be housebound or bedbound are "not forgotten" but will not receive the Pfizer vaccine due to technical issues.
"I would expect that quite soon, and I won't be a hostage to fortune about which vaccine it will be, but there will be vaccines mobile and available to GPs in the short term," he added.
