Additional reporting by Cillian Doyle.
Cases of people skipping the Covid-19 vaccine queue are "frustrating" and breach the aim of the rollout, according to the head of the HSE, Paul Reid.
The vaccination programme is based on a high level of trust, he said, but the HSE has now strengthened the validation process for those receiving jabs, according to the Irish Examiner.
Mr Reid's comments come after a number of incidents in which vaccine doses were given to people before the rollout had reached their cohort.
The Irish Mail on Sunday says cleaners, kitchen staff and administration workers at a family resource centre in Limerick were vaccinated after misrepresenting themselves as healthcare employees.
Commenting on potential abuses on the internal portal used by HSE workers to register for a vaccine, Mr Reid said the issue was not the portal but rather the abuse of trust.
Yesterday, Good Friday, we had one of our highest days so far for the vaccine administration. We'll have well over 900,000 completed by this weekend. During next week, we'll have administered over 1M doses. April & May will see the programme scale up further again @HSELive
— Paul Reid (@paulreiddublin) April 3, 2021
Recently, a doctor at the Coombe Women and Infants Hospital was found to have taken doses of the vaccine home to inoculate his family.
An independent inquiry into what happened at the Dublin maternity hospital's vaccine clinic on January 8th found that 16 relatives of eight different staff members received a dose, without the knowledge of the HSE.
The report says the vaccine clinic team was tired when they decided what to do -- and considered it a "mitigating" factor.
Tipp TD and Labour leader Alan Kelly says it's no excuse at all:
"The health service are exhausted - absolutely - but anytime when somebody decides selfishly to literally vaccinate their own family - for a consultant to walk out the door with vaccines for their own personal use thinking they could to that, in the middle of a pandemic that goes way beyond exhaustion or factors of work , that is a pre-meditated decision - and that is repulsive."
While doses from the Beacon Private Hospital were administered to staff from a private school in Co Wicklow.
The Beacon claimed the doses were 'surplus' due to an issue in the booking system which caused healthcare workers to receive more than one appointment to get their vaccine in different locations.
On Friday, the HSE confirmed 1,329 healthcare workers were due to receive their vaccine at the Citywest vaccination centre in Dublin, however, only 757 showed up.
Mr Reid said that issues with the vaccine programme are being dealt with as they arise.
In a tweet, he added the vaccine system is due to scale up in April and May, with the 1 millionth dose expected to be administered in the State sometime next week.
