Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 12 July 2022
833. Deputy Carol Nolan asked the Minister for Health if his Department and bodies under the aegis of his Department have engaged the services of two organisations (details supplied) at any point from 1 January 2020 to date; the costs associated with or incurred by the provision of services from these organisations; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37285/22]
View answerMy Department has not engaged the services of Carr Communicatiosn Ltd in this period.
My Department engaged the services of Kinzen in early 2021 when the welcome news that COVID-19 vaccines would soon be available gave all of us a tangible ray of hope and a pathway out of the pandemic.
Vaccines are a proven, cost-effective intervention to protect public health, second only to the provision of clean water. Worldwide, they save at least 2-3 million lives each year – and many more from crippling and lifelong illnesses.
COVID-19 vaccines were made possible by the unprecedented levels of scientific research and collaboration, investment, and early and proactive engagement between vaccine developers and regulators helped speed up development and ensured that quality, safety and effectiveness were not compromised.
The ongoing COVID-19 Vaccination communications and engagement strategy undertaken by my Department and the HSE had two main objectives. The first was preparing for the vaccine, emphasising the safety and regulatory processes that continue to take place in Ireland, Europe and across the world, engaging with people who have genuine hesitancies around the vaccine and communicating the Government Plan from acquisition to prioritisation to distribution. The second objective focussed on the implementation of the vaccine programme – encouraging the public to get the vaccine, informing them who will administer it and where, identifying people of trust to act as ambassadors for the vaccine and addressing emerging mis and disinformation themes relating to the COVID-19 vaccine.
This work was supplemented by the work of Kinzen, a company engaged by my Department to monitor the online dissemination of mis and disinformation relating to COVID-19 and COVID-Vaccines.
Kinzen produced a daily report of mis and disinformation topics and trends provided to my Department and the HSE, supported by a weekly meeting involving my officials and officials from the HSE to discuss current themes.
This enabled my Department to work with public health doctors to address the mis and disinformation and direct the public to official sources of information, such as the Department’s own website, the COVID-19 Data Hub and the HSE’s website. The HSE also undertakes considerable social media advertising campaigns in order to promote public health guidelines, advice and vaccine uptake across platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. The partnership with Kinzen allowed my Department and the HSE to target communications messages in a given week to support vaccine uptake and address emerging genuine concerns and questions the public may have had.
My Department spent €87,750.00 Ex Vat on this service.
