Tánaiste Leo Varadkar admitted there has been issues with the vaccine rollout plan amid criticism of the HSE by Government TDs.
This comes after a member of the Irish Medical Organisation's (IMO) GP sub-committee has said cracks are beginning to show in the system.
The issue was raised at Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil's parliamentary party meetings on Wednesday evening, with many TDs saying their constituents have been left disappointed following vaccine delays.
The criticisms were echoed in the Dáil by Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty earlier today.
"You have to ask what is happening here? What is the situation, because there has been a lengthily lead-in time, we all knew that we would need to deliver the logistics in relation to a vaccine programme," Mr Doherty said, adding the uncertainty was causing "huge anxiety".
Mr Varadkar admitted the concerns were justified, but blamed last week's shortfall on insufficient supplies.
"I appreciate that there have been some issues and there have been some delays," he said.
"A consignment of 25,000 AstraZeneca vaccines that we had expected to arrive last week did not arrive at short notice," he added.
New target
After last week's missed target, the HSE is insisting it is on course to have administered approximately 72,000 to people over 85 by the end of the week.
The IMO's GP sub-committee chair, Dr Denis McCauley said he believes this target will be met, however the system for rolling out the vaccine in community needs to be improved.
"This week, there has been 24-hour deliveries. There are people receiving vaccine delivering today after only being told yesterday," Dr McCauley said.
[The rollout] has been good, but this week has been a bit worrying.
"We can't really organise a group of 85-year-olds that quickly. [The rollout] has been good, but this week has been a bit worrying," he added.
Dr McCauley's remarks come after GPs across the country raised concerns that many surgeries had not yet received any doses of the vaccine.
It is estimated approximately 200 GP surgeries are waiting to receive doses for people over 85, with Monaghan based GP Dr Illona Duffy saying some people are getting increasingly annoyed.
"I had the son of a patient come and give out to us and tell us it was [because of] our ineptitude that we hadn't vaccinated all our patients at this stage because the HSE were quite clear that everybody over 80 would now be vaccinated this week," Dr Duffy said.
"The messages [the HSE] are putting out are not clear and are not fair," she added.
Despite these concerns, the HSE said only a relatively small number of GP surgeries have been impacted by the delayed delivery of vaccine doses.
