Rates of swine flu infection in the population have continued to decline over the past week and the current wave of the pandemic in the Republic has probably peaked, it was confirmed this evening.
The Department of Health's chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said rates of infection in the past week dropped to 134 per 100,000 of the population, down from 174 per 100,000 the previous week.
This equates to around 17,000 people being infected the past week, down from around 27,000 a week earlier.
An extra 72 people were hospitalised with the virus in the past week but the rate of increase in hospitalisations and in admissions to intensive care with H1N1 is also down slightly this week.
Meanwhile the HSE has confirmed it is investigating "a handful" of complaints from patients who claim they were charged for the swine flu vaccine by GPs. The vaccine as well as administration of the vaccine is meant to be free for everyone.
More than 100,000 people have now received the swine flu vaccine at HSE clinics and forms returned by GPs show they have vaccinated a further 65,000 people.
However the HSE said given that returns were slow from GPs, the numbers which had actually been vaccinated by family doctors at this stage was likely to be two to three times this figure.
At least 11,000 pregnant women have also been vaccinated at this stage. A total of 213 adverse reactions to the vaccine have now been reported to the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) and all these were along expected lines.
Dr Joan Gilvarry of the IMB told a press briefing at Government buildings that over 100,000 pregnant women had been vaccinated across Europe at this point. She said there had been a small number of miscarriages and stillbirths reported by pregnant women after getting the vaccine but in all cases a causal link to the vaccine had been ruled out.
None of the reports of miscarriages came from Ireland, she said.
She explained what happened by saying that a certain number of women would regrettably miscarry every week.
Dr Holohan said he was satisfied there was no connection between the miscarriages and the swine flu vaccination. It was a coincidence that both happened around the same time.
Dr Darina O'Flanagan, director of the national Health Protection Surveillance Centre, said around 4 per cent of the population had now had swine flu. She said it looked like this wave of the pandemic had peaked in Ireland now and the more people that were vaccinated the less likely it was that there will be a second wave of infection here.