Vaccination Programme Dail Éireann — 2026-01-27 ============================================================ Pádraig O'Sullivan (FF), Cork North-Central I thank the Minister of State. I know she is here instead of the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill. She has probably heard me in parliamentary party meetings in recent years talking about access to drugs in the round. It does not surprise me that the response from the Department is that we need to do more research because that is generally what it does when it comes to expanding and rolling out drugs across the board for patients. There is one thing that annoys me. As a Government, we have made a political decision to expand the respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, programme. It is a commitment in the programme for Government. While my question does not directly relate to RSV, it is on the spectrum when it comes to flu vaccinations. RSV vaccination is right in there. We have made a political decision as a Government to expand that. NIAC has recommended that the RSV vaccine be expanded. However, we have not done that yet. I am not discounting the fact we might do it in the future, and I hope to God we do, because it will prevent some of the chaotic scenes we see in our emergency departments over the winter months in particular. I would lay down the gauntlet to the Department of Health that it is time it got off its chair and made these decisions and big calls. NIAC has recommended that the RSV vaccination be expanded to older people. We already do it for children. It has recommended this. The Minister of State has said that it will cost between €4 million and €19 million for flu. Obviously, there are many caveats in that. I assume it involves many different age cohorts and whatever. I ask the Minister of State to consider rolling it out to people in nursing homes who may be vulnerable, to see if that is effective and cost efficient to begin with. Obviously, cost effectiveness is more important that people's health; that is what I keep being in told here when I raise these questions. As regards cost effectiveness, has the Department estimated to the Minister of State, or would she be able to find out in writing afterwards, what the cost of people who present with flu or RSV, for example, is during every winter period? I guarantee it is far less than the €4 million to €19 million range given to us this evening. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-27/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:01+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-27