Mr. Anthony Owens:

I will comment on it. Absolutely, there was a design flaw in the roll-out of the vaccine. The sequencing document is the document that ought to be followed, but I am not entirely clear that it was interfacing with the portal on which one would go and register one's interest in getting the vaccine. We are told that it has been fixed, that the sequencing document has been brought up to date and it is now fixed with the portal. There are still issues in terms of getting registered for vaccination.

The Deputy referred to mental health. I will say a few words on mental health, which is important. We have been contacted by doctors, both NCHDs and consultants, who are mental health doctors, psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists and are employed by one arm of the HSE but who work in the acute hospitals. They have experienced difficulties in getting their names put on a list in an acute hospital by virtue of the fact that their payroll is somewhere else. Those are the types of issues we are still trying to iron out. They have damaged the confidence we can have in this vaccination campaign. Hopefully, we are approaching the end of such problems. We need to be because the psychiatrists I mentioned have unscheduled care commitments and see patients who present through emergency departments and wards. They absolutely need to be vaccinated.