Reid: I don’t know how many jumped jabs queue

HSE chief Paul Reid has admitted he doesn’t know how many people have jumped the vaccine queue – despite claiming last week that the numbers of people abusing the system were ‘marginal’.

It follows an Irish Daily Mail investigation into Dublin’s Beacon Hospital, revealing the hospital chief allowed staff at his children’s private school to jump past healthcare workers on the vaccine list.

It also emerged that senior consultants at the Coombe maternity hospital were favouring family members instead of gardaí and the fire brigade, and placing Trinity students on the standby list.

Yesterday, an Irish Mail on Sunday investigation revealed that almost 70 staff at a Limerickbased

charity Northside Family Resource Centre were vaccinated after being told to misrepresent themselves as frontline healthcare workers in order to get themselves vaccinated. On Good Friday, the HSE set a daily record for the number of vaccines it administered at over 30,000.

Speaking yesterday, Mr Reid said that the vaccine rollout is based on trust and it is a ‘breach of trust’ for people to jump the queue and get vaccinated ahead of others.

He said that the public has ‘demonstrated a high level of trust’ so far with the programme.

‘Where there have been breaches, and there have been some breaches, I appreciate the anger that has happened. If somebody sends on the details of the [booking] portal to somebody else that is not due to get it, that is a breach in trust,’ he told RTÉ’s This Week.

‘It’s not an IT issue per se, it’s a breach of trust for people trying to jump the queue,’ he said.

Mr Reid repeatedly declined to give the exact number of people who jumped the queue. However, last week during a HSE briefing he said the number was ‘marginal’.

Under repeated questioning about the exact number, Mr Reid said: ‘I don’t have a specific number.

‘We haven’t gone through every single one. We’re moving this programme at pace and what we are learning from frontline healthcare workers, there have most certainly been some people who shouldn’t have come through in that context.

‘Where breaches have happened, we don’t support them at all and they’ve caused us as much frustration as the public.’

Mr Reid said in January and February, when hospitals were seeing massive outbreaks, people were vaccinated in hospitals ‘who would not necessarily have been on the frontline but did pose a huge risk by bringing the transmission levels into the hospital system’.

Mr Reid said the HSE is putting in an improved validation process into the booking portal as it is rolled out to the public.

He said people will need to provide a date of birth and ‘biographical data’ about themselves when they present for their vaccine, they will have to have their ID.

As of Thursday last week, there have been 893,375 vaccines administered between 636,963 first doses and 256,412 second doses.