Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will take four minutes and leave some time at the end for the Minister's answer. Although I have raised many of these issues with him privately, I will do so here, on record. I put up a post today welcoming the Helix centre in DCU being used as one of the community vaccination hubs in my area. I was inundated by requests from people asking when they might be vaccinated. It is worth saying that in the context of a vaccination programme about which we thought there might be some hesitancy, we should be delighted that people are willing to take this vaccine and want to do so.

My second point is that we are not rolling out the vaccine programme - we are rationing the vaccines we currently have. Listening to many of the contributions made by Members backs this up. This is cruel and sad but it is the reality of where we are. In making the case for each group, the national immunisation advisory committee has done a good job in outlining that many of the criteria are based on protecting the people who will suffer most by suffering illness rather than those who are in most contact with it. That is a difficult thing for people to understand sometimes but we know the vaccine is most effective at stopping people from dying. I did an interesting analysis among my own family group, from whom I was getting questions in our WhatsApp group. I applied the NIAC criteria to the 20 people in that WhatsApp group and by and large everybody was very happy with giving priority to those who were older in the group, those who had most contact in a healthcare scenario and so on. I ask people to do the same, to look at the priority list and ask themselves if they believe that it is a fair allocation of a very restricted supply. That is what the NIAC has done and that is what the Government is doing.

There are two categories where we will get more questions as supply increases. I welcome the Minister's announcement today on those people in that broad group of people with underlying conditions who perhaps would have a very severe impact with Covid. I am thinking in particular of people with rare diseases impacting their lungs and in particular of those with cystic fibrosis. I would think a case could be made for them. I am not a medic but I would appreciate it were the Minister, in his contact with the NIAC, to ask those questions and get those answers for us.

That broader group of key workers also needs to be defined. People are, on balance, very fair. They appreciate there are people ahead of them who might need this vaccine more but they want to know the basis on which those decisions are being made and the people who are making them. I have had the experience of having worked with people on the NIAC in the past in a different light and they have done a good job here. However, perhaps we need some more lay voices communicating NIAC's decision and explaining some of the decisions the medics have made. I thank the Minister for his work in this area. On the roll-out and specifically the logistics, there is no spare vaccine sitting in a warehouse not being injected in Ireland and that is something of which we should be appreciative. I am not referring to the Minister's work, although that has been done, but we should be appreciative of all the people who are injecting those vaccines, to the healthcare workers who are involved in that and all the HSE staff.

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