That is not true. They are included.

We will certainly check that out.

I very much welcome the opportunity to address the Seanad on the Private Members' Bill, and the interest of colleagues in the health service and the nursing and midwifery professions. I thank the Labour Party Senators for tabling the Bill which initiated this evening's debate. I recognise in particular the ongoing, important work of Senator Hoey and her colleagues on issues pertaining to students. Like many Members of the House, I take the opportunity to acknowledge the real commitment of all nursing and midwifery …

No.

No.

I will be sharing time with the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. It has been 44 days since the first Covid-19 vaccine was administered in Ireland. Since Annie Lynch received her vaccine on 29 December, more than 240,000 vaccines have been administered. The programme is a significant logistical challenge and the focus of thousands of people, who are transporting and administering the vaccines and managing the programme. They have built a new vaccine infrastructure involving physical infrastructure, a workforce and …

I thank the Deputy for his question. As he will be aware, we will start on Monday with those aged 85 and older and then we are going from 80 to 84, 75 to 79, and then 70 to 74. These are the tiers within which we are doing this. This starts on Monday and the schedule I have suggests that the group will have finished its second doses by mid-May, but, as always, these things are dependent upon the supplies arriving. If we get the supplies that are forecast, and as we all now know these go up and down, it would be mid…

If the Deputy does not mind, I will briefly return to those aged over 70 years and older. The timelines we were discussing before the decision on the mRNA vaccines had the end of March as the date when the administration of the first doses would have been complete, but because we are using the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and the supplies are different, that process has lengthened by about two weeks. It is not a shift from March to May. March was the completion time for the first dose and that has now shif…

It is one of the most important questions with which we are dealing in the vaccination programme at present. I have asked the Department of Health and NIAC to take a look at the prioritisation. Given what we know now about the vaccines and that the programme is under way, I do not think we can often make changes to the prioritisation list. If we are making changes, I think we will probably do that once. I have great sympathy with the position of those people to whom the Deputy referred. I have made my view on that …

Very briefly, as part of that same exercise I just referred to involving those with underlying medical conditions, we are looking at this exact issue as well. I refer to key workers, essential workers and so forth.

What I can give the Deputy is the delivery schedule, which I asked for just before we came in. As of Sunday, the total number of vaccine doses which have come in is 272,000, and I will get a breakdown for the Deputy concerning those three vaccines which have come in so far.

On the first question from Deputy Kelly, I will be led by the clinical advice on that issue but I am certainly very open to doing just what the Deputy has suggested. The transport of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines must be done in a very precise way. It is not possible, for example, to have a GP put those vaccines in the back of his or her car and drive around the hills of Tipperary or Wicklow. It may be the case, therefore, and we will be led by the clinicians on this issue, that in some isolated circumstances the…

Yes, absolutely. The validated data show an efficacy of 58% or 59%. The Oxford trials, for example, have that figure as a little bit higher. I believe the UK is about to publish field data, which may be higher again. We must keep all of that under review. If we find out that the effectiveness changes, which is updated based on more and more information, then we absolutely have to update the delivery plan accordingly.

I will ask the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, to answer Deputy Kelly's question on those who live in assisted living. With regard to GPs, the answer is "Yes". One of the principles is that we do not waste any doses. If a GP has 20 doses available and has 16 people who are 85 years old or over, it would make sense for the GP to bring in some of the next group for exactly that reason. On the September timeline I will again caveat the reply, as I have tried to do many times, by saying that it is all highly provisio…

The Deputy's statement on the roll-out is correct. For the first few days it was based on the four pilots. That was done in response to very clear advice from NIAC as to how it wanted it rolled out for the first week or so. Then the HSE contacted the various hospital groups and distributed vaccine based initially on their capacity to distribute it to the correct groups. The prioritisation was done based on the published prioritisation list from the chief clinical officer. On the Deputy's second question, he will ha…

It is a really good question. The scientific and medical community cannot answer it yet because the vaccines are being administered for the very first time. There are several unknowns at the moment including the impact on transmissibility, more detail on the effectiveness and the duration of protection, as referred to by Deputy O'Donnell. Those things are not known right now. It could be an annual situation like the flu vaccine, or maybe people will get protection for several years as with other vaccines. We do not…

The national immunisation advisory committee is looking very closely at people who are undergoing dialysis along with many other vulnerable people with underlying conditions. It will report back to the Department of Health, and the Chief Medical Officer and his team will consider that. We will decide if it is appropriate at that stage to make some changes. Regarding carers, there is no question but that the lady the Deputy mentioned deserves a vaccine. We would like nothing more than to go into that household with …

My understanding is that the contractors who are working in the HSE are included. For example, we are not differentiating between a doctor or a nurse who works in a HSE hospital and those working in a private hospital or a nursing home, the vast majority of which are private. To the best of my knowledge, no distinction has been made between public and private, which is the right thing to do. I will need to provide the Deputy with a written response containing the breakdown between the different grades and so forth …

I will get the Deputy a written reply to the specific case she mentioned. I will make two quick points on the ventilators. The Deputy and I, along with other Deputies in the Chamber, were very much involved in asking the HSE to do at the time whatever it took to get these ventilators in. We all remember the enormous pressure for PPE, ventilators and so forth. I have no doubt that there will be a review. In any such review we need to bear in mind the context in which that was done. Shortly after coming into office l…

With regard to the gap between doses, there are different gaps. The clinical advice for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is 28 days. With Pfizer, there was a range of between 21 and 28 days and the HSE has chosen 28. The gap between the first and second doses for all age groups is 28 days for that vaccine. AstraZeneca is different. For those above the age of 65, the advice is to leave a gap of four to six weeks and that is what the HSE is going with. For those under 65, the advice is four to 12 weeks and the HSE is …