A couple of thoughts on vaccination rate comparisons:

Early in the rollout there will be a lot of variation. We are in law of small numbers territory, days matter. There are big gaps in data quality & reporting systems globally. Don't read too much into published rankings, yet.

The difference between us 9th in the EU, and Italy - top of the EU is under a week. The difference between us and 2nd or 3rd is two or three days. Rankings will only be informative with a few months data. At this stage, it would be great if Eurostat standardised data collection.

Second point, is more a policy one. I've seen the HSE get criticism for two things:

1. Our rank in the EU.
2. Our lagging behind Israel, the UK, others.

One will be a fair comparator for our rollout, but is very premature. The other is an EU wide issue, not ours uniquely.

If non-EU countries are your comparator then domestic actors aren't the issue. The procurement strategy of the EU, as a whole, is. This blame game is in full swing (see below) & there are legitimate concerns, but they don't stem from domestic policy. https://www.politico.eu/article/the-vaccination-blame-game-is-it-all-the-eus-fault/

So, give the system some space to ramp up. In Feb we will see real volumes of doses arrive. There will be maybe 2x as much arriving in Feb as in Jan, maybe 3-4x by April.

It's only as those volumes start to arrive that we can fairly compare the ability of the system to deliver.