How many vaccines arrived this week?

The Minister has committed to two sets of numbers that have not arrived. First, two and a half to three weeks ago, the Minister committed in the daily updates to provide the volume of people who have been vaccinated. Why has this not happened, as we were told that it would happen within a week? On the second set of numbers, the Minister also committed to my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, approximately two weeks ago that he would break down the number of Covid-facing healthcare workers who have been vaccinated and …

I mean provided publicly.

Surely the Minister has that information instantaneously. What sort of an organisation would not know who it has vaccinated? That information must be provided, otherwise we have bigger problems here. It does not make any sense that we do not know how many Covid-19-facing front-line workers have been vaccinated in University Hospital Limerick, UHL, or the Coombe or any other hospital in this country. It is worrying that the Minister cannot provide those statistics. As I have limited time, I will ask a few other ques…

Before I get on to the main issue I want to ask the Tánaiste a question. The Minister for Health was in the Chamber earlier. I asked him how many vaccines were brought into the country this week. He said 48,000. He is wrong. According to figures given to a number of journalists, in particular Craig Hughes, who has published them in the past few minutes, it was 23,570. How can a Minister come into the House and not know how many vaccines came into the country this week? Will the Tánaiste please address that with the…

Will the Government travel this road with us? Is it the case that we do not have the legislation or the infrastructure in place, but that the Government will travel the same road as many of us are suggesting?

I hope that is the space the Government is going into.

I welcome the fact that the Tánaiste said he is not stuck on one policy or one strategy and that he is open to looking at what I and others are proposing now. I predict he will end up coming closer to us. I do not say that everything I say is 100% the way to go, but we are willing to work with the Government to ensure the best strategy. The public have had enough. We cannot go through 2021 the same way as 2020, with the numbers going up and down. When we get the numbers down, we have to keep them down. In fairness …

I urge him to come with us on this road and to adopt this strategy.

It may take a little bit of time and it might take legislation but we can do it quickly.

As a country, down through all of our existence we have always shown solidarity with poorer regions of the world. We know there are a number of different variants of Covid-19. During the week, I said that these variants are on tour. The fact that we have introduced certain measures in respect of people coming from Brazil or South Africa does not deal with the fact the variants are all over the world and cases may not necessarily originate in those jurisdictions. The People's Vaccine Alliance, which is made up of or…

On the mother and baby homes report, I have expressed the concern that today we should not necessarily be issuing a State apology. We should have agreed a date with the survivors and their organisation. I have an added concern now in relation to how we will deal with information and tracing legislation to help the survivors and their families. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, said this morning that it would be the end of the year before we would look at this. This is deeply concerning. This is absolute priority legis…

Before I start my contribution, I want to put on the record of the Dáil that I, along with many others, think that the leaking of this report caused an awful lot of hurt and distress and should not have happened. I would like the Government - and indeed all governments - to think about this. It is not the first time that this has happened. The Scally report into the CervicalCheck programme was also leaked. Both of these reports dealt with sensitive issues predominantly relating to women. These reports should not ha…

I pay particular tribute to Ms Corless, Joan Burton, my friends, Rosie and Mags McKinney, for sharing their story - I know they are not happy but I will work with them - people like Gerry, whose aunt bought him out of Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, my neighbour, Theresa Collins, and everybody else who has worked tirelessly to get to this stage. Today, we are at the beginning of a journey into our past in dealing with this issue. We have opened many doors and we need to open many more in regard to this issue.

Most of all, we need to provide supports for these women and their families into the future. It is through those supports and showing some love for them that we can truly, as a collective, say we are sorry.

We are in an unprecedented situation. I will raise a few issues with the Minister and his colleagues in the short time available. I drove up from Tipperary today. We may have become neutralised to the message that people should stay at home. The figures for close contacts, etc., are going in a certain direction but there was quite an amount of traffic on the roads. We and the Government need to re-emphasise the message in this regard. I make a special plea to employers. We need to go back to them. There are many pe…

I wish a happy Christmas to the Ceann Comhairle, his staff and all the staff of the Oireachtas for the incredible efforts they have made this year. I also wish my fellow parliamentarians, both in opposition and in government, the same. In particular, I wish the Government my best wishes on its first Christmas together, although it seemed like Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael spent many together before. Unfortunately, I want to return to the appointment of Séamus Woulfe. More than 300 documents were released to me and also…

I genuinely appreciate the Tánaiste's honesty. I accept that this documentation is not related to him. However, this is a serious issue for the Government and these questions will have to be answered pretty quickly. I have a real issue here. One of the central themes of what the Minister continuously says is that she followed the Cabinet handbook to the letter of the law. If, however, she followed the Cabinet handbook, why, all of a sudden, very early on the morning of 6 July, did she start a process to bring a mem…

Fantastically, the President of the European Commission, Dr. Ursula von der Leyen, announced an hour or so ago that EU citizens will be vaccinated from 27, 28 and 29 December. Will the Tánaiste give us all a bit of Christmas cheer and tell us on what date we will start the vaccination programme here in Ireland? Will it be 27, 28 or 29 December? On top of that, has the Government decided what it will do in relation to vaccine certificates or vaccine passports? Will this be run by the State or by private organisation…

When in Ireland?