I wish to raise a very serious concern around the vaccination programme and the fact that only 100 minutes has been set aside this week to debate this very urgent topic. I and many other Members are facing phone calls from our constituents to get answers on the roll out of the vaccine programme. In my Louth constituency there are major concerns about the roll out of the vaccine in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. Midwives and nurses in the labour ward of the maternity section were promised the vaccination last week. It was postponed and now they are not even being told when they might be vaccinated. It is also being reported that other workers in the hospital who are working in non-Covid sections, including porters and office staff, have received the vaccine. I put it to the Taoiseach that this is wrong and I ask that he please attend to it.

In the first phase of the vaccinations up to 70,000 vaccines were administered to front-line healthcare workers. Some 23,000 were administered to the residents of long-term care facilities. The objective is that by next Sunday all residents and staff in such long-term care facilities would be vaccinated, and a substantial number of front-line healthcare workers. Once the long-term care facilities are done the intention is to continue with front-line healthcare workers until the full 150,000 of those in hospitals and in the community are vaccinated. The situation so far is dependent on the supply of the vaccine. As we get the vaccine in from Pfizer-BioNTech, we are administering it. That is the only limitation on the roll out of the vaccine. Ireland is one of the better performers across Europe right now, but the level we are at now is nowhere near the level we need to be once more vaccines come on stream. That is the point. This will not happen until we have authorisation of the third vaccine, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, by the end of this month.