Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have been raising the issue of vaccine supply publicly since 2 January and, indeed, privately before that with the Taoiseach. I am glad to see the rest of the Oireachtas is now raising it. I am well used to Governments not listening to me but at this stage we are hearing about the matter from every quarter, party colleagues and every Deputy across the House. I hope we can begin to listen. Our supply procurement has been an abject failure. Where we stand by comparison with the next worst in the league is of no interest to me. I am interested only in putting an end to the current misery faced by our people, including those in the Minister's constituency and mine. The question of how well we are doing compared to some of the other countries that were asleep at the wheel is of no interest to me.

We know the EU has made a balls, quite frankly, of procuring vaccines for its nations. It went in and played hardball on price thinking it was dealing with office supplies and now we are what the Taoiseach has described as suffering the consequences of bumps in the delivery schedule. It is not lost on me that there are no bumps in the delivery schedule in Tyrone, Fermanagh, throughout the rest of the UK and Israel, but there are bumps in the road for us. I have suggested many times that we procure from others and do a side deal but we are obsessed with being goody two-shoes Europeans. Austria has done a deal with Israel to secure some of its vaccines. I have suggested this directly to the Minister and Taoiseach but they said we cannot do it as it might spook the horses. They implied that we must not offend anybody. Even at this late stage, we should ask the UK whether it can give us a number of million vaccines today on the grounds that we will replenish its stocks when ours increase in several months.

What is the position on extending beyond three weeks the period between the first and second? I am not a physician but it seems to be working for the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Does it not stand to reason? Is it not reasonable to pose the question as to whether it could also work for us?

On logistics and the management of this whole strategy, it galls me to see hard-working people such as three Ministers having to come in here to defend mediocrity dressed up as efficiency. How they manage to do it I will never know. We have the high-level task force on vaccination, NIAC, NPHET, the individual members of NPHET, who have their own media careers, the HSE, the Department of Health and the Government. We have used the wrong structure from the beginning here. We should have embraced the structure that has a proven track record, namely that of the national emergency co-ordination group, and we should not have been dealing with five or six silos. The co-ordination group had experience in a caretaker role under a previous Government and adopted a different approach. We just rowed in and we are suffering the consequences now.

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