Irish Examiner view: Only delivery can resolve vaccine rows

The gross under-delivery of vaccines not only scuttles health programmes, it, at a moment of crisis, also drains confidence in the very institutions we rely on to confront the pandemic

For a brief few hours this weekend, it looked as if our prospects, like the clocks, had changed to usher in sunnier days. The Sunday Times reported that Britain might offer 3.7m badly-needed Covid-19 vaccines to the Republic, almost half the 8m vaccines exported to Britain from the EU in February.

The newspaper reported that a Downing Street minister harrumphed that such a gesture would be a “poke in the eye” for Brussels amid an ongoing row over contracts and broken contracts. We were, almost inevitably, to be hoisted on that uncomfortable cleft stick in the deteriorating relationships between Britain and the European Union. The unvaccinated meat in the sandwich as it were.