Ireland is on course to have the highest take up of COVID-19 vaccines among young people, according to Luke O'Neill.
It comes as over 30,000 people received a jab at walk-in vaccination centres over the long weekend.
Bank holiday Monday was the busiest day for the centres, at around 11,000 people.
The HSE also says it may open them again owing to the demand.
National lead for the vaccination programme, Damien McCallion, earlier told Newstalk Breakfast: "It was good to see over the weekend - even on Friday where we only had a small number of clinics in some of our other locations - the uptake in those areas was really, really good.
"So it's certainly something we'll look at again, we'll evaluate it today.
"We'll look at how it worked, we'll take the feedback from the locations, we'll also look the people who are remaining".
There was also an option for people who were registered, but had not yet got an appointment, to get a vaccine at the centres.
Prof O'Neill told The Pat Kenny Show the credit has to go to the younger people who got up to queue.
"I haven't stopped smiling, that's amazing. I think we can be very proud of the young people, to be honest.
"They want their lives back, that's the bottom line, and they also want to help their community.
"They're the two reasons, it's fantastic.
"We may turn out to be the best in the world in that age group, it looks like, based on those numbers.
"If those numbers continue, Ireland will have the highest vaccination rate in those younger people - wouldn't that be a great thing to claim?
"And rub our neighbour's noses in it slightly - so we'll see what happens.
"But wasn't it amazing, and there was a sense of joy I heard as well.
"Get a teenager up out of bed at 6am to queue up for something - it's normally for tickets for a music festival.
"They were queueing up for a vaccine, it's just remarkable, I thought that was fantastic".
