Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I have been scanning through the questions to see which ones have been asked so as to not to waste time asking the same questions. I welcome the local PR campaign that will be launched this Friday. That will be very important in getting the public on board with the concept of getting a Covid vaccine. Hopefully, the public in general are on board with that.

From a brief read of the vaccine implementation plan, I want to give some of my initial thoughts on it and I would welcome any commentary on them. On the definition of "key workers", in the document educated staff such as teachers, special needs assistants, SNAs, and childcare workers are not defined as a key worker, which seems strange. They are in a different category, which comes after key workers. There are many comments online and fun things on Twitter about people being at this or that level on the list but what jumped out at me was our definitions. How flexible or malleable will they be as we go along or are they set in stone?

People aged between 18 and 64 who are living or working in crowded situations will be considered quite high up the list but how will we define that? How will people be able to prove that they are in that position? Those can be quite personal details and I am wondering how a person would go about proving that they deserve to be further up the list because of an unfortunate living situation that may be out of their control. What steps will be taken to deal with that sensitively but also how will that be proven? Do the witnesses have any thoughts on that yet?