Dr. Ciaran Browne:

I apologise, CVCs are Community Vaccination Centres. We are putting the capacity in place both through our sexual health services and our community vaccination centres. The three sexual health services in Dublin are in the Mater, St. Vincent's hospital and St. James's Hospital. The CVCs include those in Croke Park, Citywest, Wexford, Portlaoise, Cork, Galway and Limerick. There will be 11 centres nationally.

In respect of the supply issue, at the start of this, the HSE working with the Department of Health tried to secure as much stock as we could. We immediately procured 660 vials of the vaccine and then a further 1,400 arrived. We were trying to procure stocks in the context of a global outbreak and many different jurisdictions were trying to procure stock at the same time. The Department of Health and the EU did a lot of work to try to procure additional stock and we are hopeful it will arrive in the future.

When we commenced the first phase of vaccinating the early infectious syphilis group, the administration of the vaccine had to be done subcutaneously, which meant we used up the stock very quickly. In late August when we were planning this, the intradermal application of the vaccine became available and that was an opportunity to spread the vaccine but it necessitated us stepping back and trying to plan. Previous to that, we would not have been able to use the CVCs as much. Hence we had done a lot of operational planning. The Senator can appreciate administering a vaccine like this safely to a large cohort necessitates a huge amount of operational planning about how we will provide it, the information we will give out, how people will book and importantly, how the dose will be recorded because it is a two-dose regimen. It is therefore important to track who has received the first dose and who has received the second dose. We are as anxious as everyone to ensure we start vaccinating the community as quickly as possible and we have done a lot of work in partnership with them and to keep them updated on our plans.