Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be looking for some responses, if I can get them.

I thank the Minister and the Minister of State for being here. Good work has been done by everybody in Ireland over the past year to make sure that we try to master the virus and take back charge of our lives. Vaccination has been the one great hope and will sort out our problems. I hope we will get back to some sort of normality in the coming months. I must, however, raise some concerns about the roll-out of the vaccination programme. I have said repeatedly that the public needs to see more information about the projected supplies that will come into the country. We seem to be getting a daily report of what has been done but large cohorts of people are looking for timelines for their vaccination and whether it will happen in March, April, May, June, July, August or September. We do not have that. We have a plan but not a programme to show the supply chain for the vaccination coming into this country on a weekly basis and to indicate the quantity we will get. Front-line workers, nurses working in the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, have asked me when they will be vaccinated. People are wondering when their children, who are in their 20s and 30s and suffering from cystic fibrosis, will be vaccinated. Can the Government produce a programme, rather than a plan? The programme would show indicatively the supply and how it will be sent out.

In my home town of Tuam, a GP did not get a supply of vaccine. The communication with the HSE was very poor. The staff in the GP's practice had to talk to the families of older patients on the morning of their appointments and explain why the patients could not come in. The practice gratefully received the Moderna vaccine this week and the doctor said it was the first time people had laughed on the way in and out of the surgery because they had got something they had been waiting for. There is a huge problem with communication between the HSE and GPs. We cannot rely on emails. How can a GP practice plan when it gets two conflicting emails in one hour as to what type of vaccine it will get? How can it manage that? GPs do not know when they will get a second batch of vaccine and cannot plan around it. That is not fair to the people who are waiting and wanting to know what is going to happen.

Parents of children with special needs have been on to me and want to know when vaccines will be available. They do not want to know that they are in level A, B, C, D, E or F. They want to know, within reason, when they are going to get their vaccination. They want to get some sort of communication and speak to people who know when it is going to happen. We do not know all the answers but one thing that is coming back to me clearly from people in my constituency is that the communication is very poor. We cannot rely on a daily report stating how many people have been vaccinated because it does nothing to help or reassure the people who are not vaccinated. How can we set up better communication? How is the Minister going to deal with the staff in the blood transfusion service? When might they be vaccinated?

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