Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I raise that issue because we are at an important juncture in the vaccine roll-out. It is early, but confidence has been shaken by the incidents spoken about earlier. The first guiding principle of the sequencing document is transparency and practicality. Transparency is really important. The Minister and the HSE need to get this right now, to fix the mistakes and get confidence going. Resentment is breeding within the healthcare sector, as we are hearing through our constituency offices. There is one group of healthcare workers, but within that, as the Minister will be aware, eight subsets in the sequencing document are listed in order of priority. I ask him, in the interests of transparency, which is the number one guiding principle, to include in his reporting the numbers within each subset of healthcare workers who have been vaccinated. Within the acute hospitals and the healthcare settings, there are workers who are front facing with people infected with Covid, and who are looking either down the corridor or up the stairs and asking why and how others have been vaccinated when they have not yet got it despite their position.

There is no doubt that the national roll-out of a vaccine is difficult, but the first guiding principle is transparency, so we should have figures for those subsets. Last week in the Chamber, I requested figures compiled by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, HPSC, that showed the number of workers who were sick with Covid. The Minister provided them and that helped. It did not bring down the ceiling. It helped with transparency and allowed people to understand. The CEO of the Galway hospital group has talked about the challenges he is facing with workers being out sick. The more transparency and data there are, the better we can all respond. Will the Minister please consider that?

I would appreciate if I could follow up with another question.

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