Covid-19 vaccine: Ireland supply delay 'enormous problem'

Tánaiste (Irish Deputy Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar has said AstraZeneca's explanation for why it has failed to meet Covid-19 vaccine supply targets for the EU "are not satisfactory".

He said it was evident there was a problem with AstraZeneca in contrast with the Pfizer and Moderna companies.

The latter were honouring their commitments to the EU "give or take a few glitches", he said.

Mr Varadkar described the problem as "enormous".

"I'm seeking explanations too," he told the Dáil (Irish parliament).

"I can understand how AstraZeneca might run into problems with supply for manufacturing or quality control.

"But I do not understand how this big, successful company can honour its contracts to the United States and honour its commitments to the United Kingdom but for some reason not honour its contractual commitments to the European Union."

Mr Varadkar said "there is provision" to ban the export of AstraZeneca outside of the EU but he gave no indication that such a move would be implemented any time soon.

He was responding to a question from Labour leader Alan Kelly, who criticised the EU's response to AstraZeneca's failure to meet its contractual targets.

Mr Kelly said the EU facilitated the export of 34 million doses to countries, including nine million to the UK, at a time when the US and the UK were not "in essence" allowing any exports.

Mr Kelly suggested that the Irish response to Wednesday's announcement of 46,500 additional Pfizer vaccines should have been: "What about the 653,500 vaccines net that we are still down?"

On Thursday another 10 deaths linked to Covid-19 and 592 new cases of the virus were recorded in the Republic of Ireland.