Ireland's EU Commissioner has admitted the bloc is "not in a place we would like to be" regarding the supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
Mairead McGuinness says global demand and issues with production have resulted in limited supplies.
However, she says the European Union is "committed" to ensuring production is ramped up.
It comes as around 3,000 GPs and practice nurses will get their first dose of the immunisation against coronavirus today.
Latest figures show over 261,000 vaccines have been administered across the country, with 171,000 people receiving their first dose.
Earlier this week, HSE CEO Paul Reid said that Ireland ranks third in the EU in terms of the speed of vaccine rollout.
Commissioner McGuinness explained that work is under way at the highest levels to ensure adequate supplies in the near future.
Speaking to On the Record with Gavan Reilly, she said: "I think it's good that we acknowledge that Ireland is doing well.
"But within that, the President herself [Ursula von der Leyen] said in the European Parliament last week that the fact is today we're not where we want to be in combatting the virus, including getting sufficient vaccines.
"But remember we are in a global situation where everybody wants access to vaccines that have been developed in a very short period of time and scaling up mass production has been a problem."
The Financial Services Commissioner added that the EU has contracts with BioNtech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, with discussions also under way with Johnson & Johnson, Curevac, and two other vaccine manufacturers.
"I think the situation we're in today will change as we advance," she added, with a greater flow of vaccines distributed once production is ramped up.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Credit: Julien Warnand/AP/Press Association ImagesVaccine nationalism
The rollout of the immunisation programme against coronavirus has raised the further issue surrounding pharmaceutical supply chains, Commissioner McGuinness added.
In a global pandemic, we need to "take stock of not just the present but the future", she stated, so that the current situation can never prevail again.
She continued: "It will require big questions to be asked of having capacity within a pharmaceutical company to produce when needed but also to be able to divert production to areas where we need, in this case, vaccine rollout, while not interrupting the supply of other products."
Commissioner McGuinness added that "all of us would love to be able to say that we could get the vaccine for ourselves", meaning Ireland, but even if a nation could achieve that, as the UK is attempting to do, it wouldn't stop the virus.
"The truth is that the most vulnerable need to be vaccinated, not just in Europe and the UK and Israel, but everywhere, and one country or one part of the globe deciding to look after itself alone will just prolong the problem.
"But I accept the general point that people want vaccination now, but I hope there is an understanding that the work we have done to work with the EU 27 together is better and will have a better outcome than one country going off, as some others have done, and looking after itself."
Image via @McGuinnessEU on TwitterShe acknowledged that it was a very stressful time for everyone, but added that by focusing on what is not working, "we won't accept what is going to work in time", which is there will be sufficient doses available.
The real problem is figuring out how to fund vaccination programmes for countries who can't afford it, she added.
Commissioner McGuinness said the EU will "absolutely" take on a role in assessing whether other facilities can be repurposed to produce the vaccines.
"My colleague has already been looking at this, he has been in conversations with the CEOs of all the major pharmaceutical companies, not just in recent weeks but months because we talked to people who can help us deliver for Europe and indeed, globally," she said.
"So this is under way and it is about timing, and we are not in a place we would like to be but we are getting vaccines moving in and being dispersed across the European Union and being delivered to where they are necessary."
