A professor of immunology has said he thinks Ireland 'should be in a good place' with a coronavirus vaccine by next summer.
Paul Moynagh is professor of immunology and director of the Kathleen Lonsdale Institute for Human Kathleen Lonsdale Institute Health Research at NUI Maynooth.
He told Newstalk Breakfast more longer-term data needs to be published on the vaccine trials.
However he said "we're very close and it's looking very promising".
The European Union has done an advance deal for six vaccines, while Ireland has signed up to four of them.
This includes Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson.
Prof Monagh explained: "The EU has advance purchase of 1.4 billion doses of them - based on our population, we're due to get 1.1% of them - so that's about 15 million doses.
"Certainly I think we're likely to have enough vaccine, so obviously the challenge [is] in terms of rolling it out".
But he said the speed of the vaccine being delivered is not a concern.
"Absolutely the timeframe is very, very fast relative to what we've been used to in terms of vaccine development.
"But a lot of that has been due to resources and funding, and we've been able to truncate a lot of - what previously would have taken years - we've been able to reduce that to a timeframe of months.
"But I think we still need to see published data - at the moment everything has been by press release".
He said data needs to answer questions around safety, how long the protection lasts for, effectiveness in older people and how the vaccines are working.
"Are they protecting against infection, are they protecting against disease - and that's a really important question to answer".
"There are some logistical challenges, even associated with the trials at the moment, the data we have on protection relates to looking at maybe two to three weeks after immunisation.
"So again, it's very short-term".
In terms of a timeframe, Prof Monagh said he has high hopes for next summer.
"I think it's going to be a big contributor to getting us back to some degree of normality.
"My own view is that if we can get to April/May, I think we'd be in a pretty good place.
"It'll give us the summer then to really roll out [the vaccine] in big numbers.
"And the reason I say that is because I've mentioned before I think the virus is showing signs of seasonality.
"So if we get beyond the next number of months... so I think by summertime, late summer we should be in good place".
He was speaking as the Government's Taskforce on COVID-19 Vaccination meets for the second time on Monday, as Ireland enters the final day of level five restrictions.
The country is moving to level three on Tuesday, with additional measures coming into place from Friday December 4th.
