Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Having been in my seat, the Minister will appreciate how difficult time and the management of time is for backbenchers. If this situation is as the Minister has said, we still do have a certain amount of information. We can provide information to people on the basis of the information we do have. I prefaced my remarks by recognising that we would get more vaccines and not less, that we would get more speed and not less and that it would be a schedule which will be expediting over time. The Minister will have the opportunity to address that aspect further.

I have also had communications from senior staff in the Central Mental Hospital, who have yet to receive information regarding when they will receive vaccine doses for their long-term patients. We saw a report in The Irish Timestoday regarding the difficulties experienced at St. Vincent's Hospital yesterday and the day before, where people who were not in direct contact with patients were being vaccinated.

This is where that measure of flexibility comes in. It is difficult and understandable. Professor Karina Butler, the chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee, NIAC, commented that one does not want people who are not on the front line to leapfrog over others at greater risk but hospitals had to have a measure of flexibility and the vaccines that were taken out of cold storage had to be used within a certain period. That is totally understandable and I get that. However, the more that happens and the more that people like me cannot account for why that is happening, why this person is getting it and that person is not, why leapfrogging is going on even though it should not be and why flexibility works for this person but there is not flexibility for that person, the greater the risk. This is the only measure in this pandemic that we can foresee and over which we have some measure of control. As Members pointed out in the Dáil before Christmas, this is the biggest logistical exercise this State will face and the risk is that if we do not do this and we cannot provide that clearly, we will lose the solidarity we have. It is crucial we get our priority groups looked after.

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