Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Today is a truly historic day. Joanna Sloan, 28, from Belfast, a nurse working in her field, and Margaret Keenan, 90, originally from County Fermanagh and now in Coventry, received the first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. They are obviously not the first people to receive it, but they are the first to receive it post trial. It is an historic day because science has delivered.

Science works. We now have vaccines. The scientists have done their work and have delivered. Now we, as public representatives, need to support the scientists who have delivered these vaccines. We must be very pro-vaccine.

Historically, I and my party have been very pro-vaccine, as the Taoiseach knows. We pushed in the last Dáil for the human papillomavirus, HPV, vaccine to be given to boys. I am delighted that has commenced. We fought in relation to other vaccines as well. I attended the global vaccination conference last year in Brussels. The deputy chief medical officer, CMO, was there as well.

I am concerned about utterances by some public representatives in the past and about the impact it is having on our citizens. I am concerned that many citizens are being fed lies and deliberate misinformation about vaccines at a critical time. I ask the Taoiseach publicly to deal with it. We all have a role here. Today, the Labour Party has written to all Deputies, Senators and MEPs, that is, to every national public representative, and has asked them whether they will sign up to and promote the vaccine and promote the public awareness behind the vaccine and its full roll-out. We hope it will be 100%. I ask the Taoiseach to lead and I ask everyone else to sign it and return it within a week. We need a public awareness campaign now, ahead of the vaccine roll-out, which hopefully will be early in the new year.

I ask the Taoiseach to consider one other factor. Much of the misinformation is spread on social media platforms. In this city, we have Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Google and Instagram. We need to talk to them and deal with misinformation that is deliberately put out on those platforms. They all changed their algorithms and their rules in respect of the recent US election. They need to do so again with regard to the roll-out of this vaccine. It is important for people's lives. We in Ireland can lead on that if the Taoiseach uses his role to talk to these social media companies, which are now so powerful in relation to how messaging gets out. Will the Taoiseach consider that?

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