Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask about the vaccination programme because I am concerned about two aspects of it. Vaccines provide great hope for people. The vast majority of people are looking forward to getting vaccinated and are keen to know when they are likely to receive a vaccine. For that reason, I think we need to improve the data that are available.

Many of us have been looking to the Minister for Health to provide daily figures about the performance of the vaccination programme. That is important. The Taoiseach and the Minister have said that we are delivering the vaccines, getting them out and administering them as quickly as they arrive but there is no way of gauging that. While we are getting daily figures for the administration of the vaccine, the other side of that equation, that is, the number of vaccines that have arrived in this country, is not available. The only data on vaccine deliveries that are available come from the COVID-19 Resilience and Recovery 2021 - The Path Ahead document, in which a table is set out. Those are the only official figures we have for the forecasted deliveries and they indicate a substantial gap between the numbers of vaccines forecasted to be delivered and the numbers that are being administered. It is a very substantial gap. It seems that more than two thirds of the promised supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine have not been administered. Four fifths of the promised supply of the Moderna vaccine have not yet been administered. The number is smaller in the case of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

Can the Taoiseach provide an explanation for that big gap? What is happening to those expected vaccines that we were told would be delivered? I am talking, in particular, about the month of February because we have all of the daily figures for the vaccines administered. Can the Taoiseach explain that? If he cannot do so today, can he get a note on it? Will he commit to publishing daily figures for the numbers of doses received in this country, the numbers available for vaccination and the number of doses that have been administered? It is important to have all of that data on a daily basis if we are to be able to gauge the performance of the programme. It is important from the point of view of transparency and accountability to allow us to measure the performance of the programme. That is not possible at the moment. I would appreciate a response from the Taoiseach on that matter.

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