Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will get figures on the Pfizer vaccines for the Deputy but we have sufficient numbers coming in to be able to open up vaccinations next week for the 30 to 34 age group.

I will address now the issue for those aged 60 to 69, which has been raised by many Deputies. I have also spoken to people in this group, some of whom have contacted my constituency office. We all hear the frustration and the very urgent desire and, indeed, demand of people aged between 60 and 69, and many other people as well who have had one dose of AstraZeneca. This is not just confined to the 60 to 69 age group. What have we done? First, this group has been prioritised. I know that everyone is looking for a second dose but let us remember that the first dose gives a great deal of protection, particularly against severe illness. That is very important. A lot of protection has already been afforded because this is a priority group. The good news is that because of the NIAC changes, we have been able to go from a 16-week interval to a 12-week interval, then an eight-week interval and now a four-week interval. For this reason, we are expecting to complete, in the next week and a half, second doses for the 60 to 69 age group and all those in other cohorts who have had one dose of AstraZeneca. We are moving very quickly because the NIAC advice has allowed us to accelerate the process and we are doing that immediately. We all hear the demands from this group and the urgency involved. Deputies should rest assured that we are doing everything we can to accelerate that. I hope that message will be well received.

I will now address indoor activities because there has been a strong focus, rightly, on the public health advice the Government received and accepted on indoor activity. There has been a focus on hospitality but we must remember that this also involves dance classes and indoor exercise. Much more than hospitality is involved. It has been very difficult for people who were planning to open their premises and were ordering stock and scheduling classes to hear they had to cancel those plans. We hear that very clearly.

The unambiguous advice that we got from NPHET in light of its modelling and based on what is happening in Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales is that, in terms of becoming infected, it is not safe for unprotected people to engage in what NPHET would describe as high-risk activity. This advice is not given based on what is fair or unfair but on what is safe and unsafe. The State believes it is unsafe for there to be smoking indoors in bars but safer for it to be done outdoors, if not for the people smoking but for other people. The State believes it is unsafe for people aged 17 and under to drink alcohol in bars but over the age of 18 it is considered safe. The framing for this is what is safe and unsafe and the only motivation is to try to keep people safe.

I will give some context on the level of contagion that we are dealing with. NPHET laid out a case in Waterford recently where a super-spreader event was linked to socialising at a pub. That was outdoors. In Scotland, there are now 2,000 Delta Covid-19 cases linked to the European soccer matches outdoors. That is what is happening outdoors with Delta. Can we imagine what would happen if people are not protected indoors? If we accept, as I do, that the public health advice is right, although obviously colleagues are free to refute or not accept it, then we have only one of two options available to us. We can keep indoor activities, including hospitality, closed for everybody. That is absolutely legitimate and it would treat everybody in the same way. We would just say that it is closed for everybody, regardless of whether it is safe for most people, because that is to treat everybody in the same way. That is a completely legitimate view to hold. The alternative view, which is the one we have taken, is that we need to help the hospitality sector and facilitate people to go to exercise and dance classes or go out for dinner. We need to help the people in those sectors who need jobs. If we can open them for most people, should we do so? My view is that “Yes” we should. Hopefully, today’s announcement of the parallel opt-in model for the AstraZeneca and Janssen vaccines will go a long way. Anyone who works in a bar or restaurant and wants to be able to have a drink or a meal in that bar or restaurant can now do so because he or she can now opt in and get vaccinated.

We all accept that there is nothing fair about this virus. It is not fair that this virus kills older people much more than younger people.

It is not fair that last year people over the age of 70 had to isolate themselves in an extraordinary way and other people did not because other people did not need to do so for safety reasons. None of us suggested, however, that because those over 70 had - I hate the word but we understand the concept - to cocoon, everyone under 70 should have had to do so as well because we should all do the same thing. What we said was that for this group of people, for safety reasons, we needed to apply different public health measures. I fully accept anyone here saying they disagree with that and that if everyone cannot do something, then nobody should be allowed to do it. That is an absolutely legitimate view to take. My view is that, on balance, if we can support the sector, support jobs and allow people to go about their lives like they are doing in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and various other countries, that is probably the better way, but I fully appreciate there are different views on that.

I was asked some very reasonable questions about the modelling. Will we update the modelling now that we have a plan as of this morning as to how we will implement the NIAC advice? Absolutely, we will. Also, we will keep updating the modelling based on what we are learning from the UK in the main. There is a big question the scientists are looking to answer. We know the cases have shot up in the UK, and NPHET is telling us they will shoot up here. Thankfully, to date, the hospitalisations and fatalities in the UK have not shot up. They have increased and are going up. The latest data I have been given show that for every 1,000 people who get the Delta variant in the UK, three people are dying. Therefore, if there were a super-spreader event at which 1,000 people at some large stadium or something got infected, the information we have is that three of those people would die from Covid. That is still pretty stark. We are therefore watching the UK very carefully to see, as their cases shoot up, what happens with hospitalisation and death. Obviously, the advice and the measures will change depending on what we see happen there.

Very reasonable questions were raised about the pharmacists and whether this has just been landed on them. The Irish Pharmacy Union, IPU, was central to the detailed planning for this. About 700 pharmacies have opted in so far; more may join. People can go onto hse.ieand find the full list of pharmacies that are engaging and find a pharmacy near them and on Monday engage with that pharmacy to see if they can get registered.

It is worth saying we will have to appeal to people's understanding on this. We are moving really quickly on this. Going back to when the GPs started rolling out the vaccine programme, we will all remember that there was a lot of debate, sometimes very robust debate, about a GP in one county or another not getting the supply he or she was meant to get on Monday and having to cancel a list of people and that being deeply frustrating - and it was deeply frustrating. However, as Dr. Mike Ryan of the WHO said, in a pandemic the perfect is the enemy of the good and we have to operate like that. The HSE did phenomenal work with the GPs, a call centre was set up and, over time, those supply chain issues were ironed out but it did not start perfectly. I expect that it will not start perfectly with the pharmacists either. We are moving really quickly and moving supplies to 750 pharmacies all over the country. Is it possible that any given pharmacy may not get the supply it was expecting on Monday? It is. Is it possible the pharmacy will have to contact people it had scheduled to tell them the supply has not arrived and that it will get back to them later in the week? That is entirely possible. I will be surprised if that does not happen. What I can tell the House is that we will do everything we can to get this as right as possible and that when mistakes are made we will learn and respond, just like we tried to do with the GPs. I ask Oireachtas colleagues and the public just to bear in mind that we are doing this really quickly, it is logistically very complex and it will not run perfectly. There will be people looking for a Janssen vaccine, for example, that may not be available in their local pharmacy. The local pharmacy may have run out and those people may get frustrated. Right now, there is not one for everyone in the audience in July. There is a lot. We do not know what the uptake will be, but I ask for people's understanding on this.

There were a lot of questions about planning for the future. Are we looking at boosters? We are. We are looking at the scientific and the medical evidence as to how and when they may be appropriate. We have pre-purchased a large volume of multiple different vaccines for both this year and next year, planning for vaccination programmes for next year as well. We are also planning for the autumn and winter vaccination work. I have no doubt but that we will have ongoing Covid vaccinations, a flu vaccination programme and all the school-based vaccination programmes. We now have this wonderful new infrastructure in place which we have never had before. The Department, the HSE and I are working to figure out how best to consolidate that into planning for the autumn and the winter.

Lastly, one colleague asked about public health. Are we building to protect ourselves for the future? Are we putting a state-of-the-art pandemic defence system in place, which we need? The answer is "Yes". What are we doing? Colleagues will be aware we have agreed an historic deal with public health doctors to move to a consultant-led contract. That is really important. Last year in the budget I sanctioned a doubling of the workforce. The HSE is hiring to double that workforce, and the Chief Medical Officer, the HSE and my Department and I are engaged in an established reform plan in place for public health as it relates to the regions, local autonomy, responsiveness and so forth. That is all being looked at to be implemented.

See this speech in context