Dáil debates

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Ceisteanna - Questions

Government Communications

4:10 pm

Photo of Peadar TóibínPeadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

This day last week, the Taoiseach stated that only 93,000 of 180,000 people showed up for their booster appointments. He suggested there was not the same urgency for boosters as there was for the first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. Does he stand by that statement? Is it still correct? Was it even correct last week? My office and those of other Deputies are getting calls from people who want the booster shot and are eligible but have not received a text message, people who have received a text message but already got the booster shot elsewhere, people who are being told by their GPs that there are no boosters available to them and people who have gone to the open vaccine centres and waited several hours in a queue for a vaccine. On Sunday morning in Navan, for example, there were hundreds of cars stretching far up the roads outside the vaccine centre. People were queueing for hours at that vaccine centre. In many ways, the confusion in respect of this mirrors the confusion in respect of the roll-out of the vaccines at the start of the Covid crisis. I remember that at that stage there were people on consultants' lists and other doctors' lists who were getting two invitations. I know a person with stage 4 cancer who could not get an invitation from either list and had fallen through the stools in that regard.

What the country actually needs - the Taoiseach probably knows this because he has experience - is a centralised patient database to enable us to roll out these programmes efficiently, as countries such as Denmark have done. Until we have that central patient database, we will always have this type of confusion in respect of what is happening to patients and the messages we are getting. Will the Taoiseach commit to the development of such a centralised patient database?

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