I want to ask about the vaccination programme because I am concerned about two aspects of it. Vaccines provide great hope for people. The vast majority of people are looking forward to getting vaccinated and are keen to know when they are likely to receive a vaccine. For that reason, I think we need to improve the data that are available.

Many of us have been looking to the Minister for Health to provide daily figures about the performance of the vaccination programme. That is important. The Taoiseach and the Minister have said that we are delivering the vaccines, getting them out and administering them as quickly as they arrive but there is no way of gauging that. While we are getting daily figures for the administration of the vaccine, the other side of that equation, that is, the number of vaccines that have arrived in this country, is not available. The only data on vaccine deliveries that are available come from the COVID-19 Resilience and Recovery 2021 - The Path Ahead document, in which a table is set out. Those are the only official figures we have for the forecasted deliveries and they indicate a substantial gap between the numbers of vaccines forecasted to be delivered and the numbers that are being administered. It is a very substantial gap. It seems that more than two thirds of the promised supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine have not been administered. Four fifths of the promised supply of the Moderna vaccine have not yet been administered. The number is smaller in the case of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.

Can the Taoiseach provide an explanation for that big gap? What is happening to those expected vaccines that we were told would be delivered? I am talking, in particular, about the month of February because we have all of the daily figures for the vaccines administered. Can the Taoiseach explain that? If he cannot do so today, can he get a note on it? Will he commit to publishing daily figures for the numbers of doses received in this country, the numbers available for vaccination and the number of doses that have been administered? It is important to have all of that data on a daily basis if we are to be able to gauge the performance of the programme. It is important from the point of view of transparency and accountability to allow us to measure the performance of the programme. That is not possible at the moment. I would appreciate a response from the Taoiseach on that matter.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. Without question, the vaccination programme and its roll-out are critical parts of the wider strategy to deal with the pandemic. The vast majority of people in Ireland are adhering to the guidelines and restrictions. That is having an impact in getting the hospital and intensive care unit, ICU, numbers down and reducing community transmission as the vaccination programme is being rolled out.

The national task force and the HSE are publishing data on vaccinations. The key is the ongoing issue of supply from AstraZeneca, Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna. There have, without question, been bumps along the way, most recently with the shortfall of supply last week from AstraZeneca, as the chair of the task force said last Saturday. The company believes that shortfall will be made up in the next week and will come through. There have been issues around supply and those were discussed at the European Council meeting where there was a dedicated meeting on Thursday last about European-wide vaccination. China, America and Europe are the major production centres for vaccines. Supply is the issue across the board. Europe has appointed a Commissioner to deal with removing bottlenecks affecting supply.

In the Irish context, we are administering that which we are getting in.

I will revert to the task force on the issues Deputy Shortall raised. There is no difficulty in having it go through the situation with the Deputy. We had to reconfigure following the decision by NIAC to provide the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to the over-70s and the AstraZeneca vaccine to those under-70. That meant the roll-out had to be reconfigured through the GP network and as a result there can be a lag in data coming back into the centre. Essentially, we are administering the vaccines we get, apart from the ones that have been kept back for second doses.

The figures that are available now indicate that we are not administering the vaccines that have come in. Perhaps the Government needs to update the figures on what is coming in, but it is important it does that so that there is transparency about this. It is not a matter of giving me the figures. These are figures that should be publicly available. It is only when the Government is transparent about this that people will have confidence that the programme is running well. I again appeal to the Taoiseach to make those figures available or to update the figures that are available on the number of vaccines that have been received into this country.

The other point I would make to the Taoiseach is that we all accept there are fluctuations in supply, but the level of delivery at the moment is averaging approximately 12,000. We need to up that by nearly four times the amount if we are to be ready for the roll-out programme on a mass basis. That is the reason we need a published plan on how the Government is going to ramp up to that level-----

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta.

-----so that we can get the vaccines out as quickly as they arrive.

The current figures that have been released show we are above the EU average with 8.3 doses administered per 100 of the population. As of 27 February, 435,895 Covid-19 vaccines had been administered. Some 294,550 people have received their first dose and 141,345 people have received their second dose.

It is the ones that are delivered to the country.

We are on target to substantially administer the first dose to 72,000 over-85s by the end of the first week of March and arrangements are being made to vaccinate homebound elderly people in conjunction with GPs and local community teams. That will be followed with the subcohort of people aged between 80 and 84. By the end of this week, approximately 1,200 GP practices will have participated in the vaccine programme.

It is the number that we are receiving.

Yes, I know that. The vaccines are being administered as we receive them. The chairman has been publicly saying that.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Taoiseach.

The chairman, Brian MacCraith, and Paul Reid have said this publicly on a number of occasions. We have said as soon as we get vaccines in the aim is to use them.

Tá an t-am caite.

The aim is to use the vaccines within the week.

We do not have the figures. Why does the Government not publish them?