Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Is it not pretty embarrassing that Boris Johnson's Government has managed to do a better job of rolling out the vaccination programme than our Government? This is the Prime Minister who made an absolute hames of the initial response to the pandemic and who, to put it mildly, has shown incompetence at many levels during this crisis. However, Boris Johnson's Government is streets ahead of us in terms of securing the vaccine and rolling it out. Does the Taoiseach have an explanation as to how we could get it so wrong and even Boris Johnson could get it so right? Serious questions need to be asked. As difficult as I suspect it might be to do so, did the Taoiseach obtain any insights from Boris Johnson on the telephone as to how the British Government got it so right and we got it so wrong and why our vaccination programme is in serious trouble and so far behind the UK? This has potentially serious consequences in terms of there being an all-Ireland epidemiological unit, with high levels of vaccination in the North and pitifully low levels here, with all the possibilities that has of encouraging variants and so on, which could undermine everybody's efforts. In all seriousness, I would like an explanation. Does the Taoiseach have an explanation as to the incredible contrast between what we have done here on vaccination and what Boris Johnson has managed to do?

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