Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I share the Chair's frustration at not being able to get straight answers because earlier I had asked for an assurance that we were able to secure sufficient quantities of the flu vaccine and it is only in the past 15 minutes that Mr. McCallion has spoken of constraints in the market. Will he explain to us exactly what are those constraints? Is it a question of availability or of cost?

I put on the record again my serious concern regarding the HSE planning for only an additional 200,000 vaccines. In the context of the enormous pressures on the hospitals and the greatly reduced capacity, we simply cannot afford to have anything like the same number of people hospitalised this year as a result of the flu as we did last year, which was 4,300 people. We need an assurance at this point that the preparatory work has been done and that adequate quantities of the vaccine have been secured. Will Mr. McCallion explain, therefore, what the market constraints are, please?