Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. Once again, I want to put this issue in perspective. Some 52% of Covid deaths, amounting to 4,628 of the total, have been registered since 1 January 2021. Of the 232,164 confirmed cases, 60% have been notified since 1 January 2021. More people have died and more cases have been confirmed in this phase of the pandemic, all of which were eminently foreseeable. I will not use up my time on this point because I raised it last week, but it is important to put it into perspective.

The Minister has given a statement, and I welcome him and believe he is taking the right approach by standing here and doing his best to answer questions. However, I am certainly not happy with those answers. The whole debate is phrased in terms of the vaccine roll-out, which I understand is the title of the topic at hand, but generally, vaccination is one part of an effective overall plan for dealing with Covid. I notice that the talk on the part of the Government is about vaccination now, not just today because that is the topic at hand, but generally. All our eggs are in one basket, which is totally unacceptable.

I will make a few general points in a moment. However, first I want to take issue with one or two points the Minister made in his statement. When he wants to quote GPs, there is an onus on him to get a broad variety of GPs for this purpose. I welcome the opinion of GPs who think the vaccine roll-out is a collective mission and that history is being made, it is D-Day and it is all marvellous. However, like many Deputies today, I can quote other GPs, in my case from Connemara. I have been told, for example, that the roll-out is totally inconsistent in Connemara. It is most unusual for doctors to contact me, so they are going out on a limb when they do so. One doctor told me: "Despite the Minister's assurances and his undoubted confidence in the information he is receiving, the fact remains that there are huge gaps in the amount of vaccines being rolled out." I know of GP practices with 500 patients aged over 70 that are only getting a small number of vaccines and other practices with fewer patients in that age group that are receiving more. I know of a case in the middle of February, where three out of four GP practices in an area three received a supply of vaccines and one got nothing. The GP in question spoke on the radio and was very vocal about the issue and has got any number of Pfizer vaccines since. He said this himself. He has now moved on to administering the vaccine to over 70 year olds.

There are huge inconsistencies, therefore, on the ground. I am not sure that we could expect any better, because the HSE was creaking before the pandemic and the public health system was in a mess. I want a debate some day in the Dáil on all of the important aspects of dealing with a pandemic. Last week I quoted Mr. Ryan, who said that we still had time to change in March last year. He reluctantly declared that there was a pandemic and stated that there are different aspects to this that we must deal with, namely, testing, tracing, isolation and treatment. To my absolute horror last week, I heard a very nice doctor from UCG talking about students who had caught Covid again. The entire conversation was about getting Covid a second time as opposed to testing, tracing and telling us how those students caught it in the first place. No question was put to this doctor on the national airwaves and no attempt was made by the doctor to explain the lack of tracing.

I am not sure if the Minister of State will have the opportunity to answer, but she told us that all those aged 85 would be vaccinated. Perhaps she could clarify by note whether that referred to the first or second dose of the vaccine. I also ask her to clarify how that relates to those who are housebound. I was contacted by a person at their wits' end who said that she is actually throwing things at the radio and the television when we are assured that everything is going well. She said that her 90-year-old mother is housebound and has not received any vaccination because the programme that the Minister of State said would be rolled out by the national ambulance service has not been rolled out yet.

Last week, the Minister stated that he would get back to me on the issue of call centres. Nobody has got back to me on call centres, the cost of them and how they will work. The people contacting me are at their wits' end.

I have 40 seconds left. At the outset I said that there is frustration at the constant chat about vaccination without any time being allocated to all the other aspects of the Covid pandemic. I am also tired of hearing Deputies calling on the Taoiseach to talk to AstraZeneca. It has utterly failed in its contractual duties. I have no idea how such a mess was made of that contract. Now we are going to appeal, as it were, to the bully who is stockpiling, as opposed to looking outside of the box and seeking to obtain vaccines on a non-profit basis in the future. We will face other variants and more epidemics. Why do we not look at the example of Cuba? It has a population of 9 million and seems to have a very low death rate. Have we talked to its government? I understand that five vaccines are in development there, one of which is to be rolled out in July on a non-profit basis. Are there other examples we can look at?

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