Mr. Fergal Goodman:

I will not talk about the dialysis group per sebecause that, as Mr. Walsh has said, is probably reflective of many groups of patients with one condition or more and cases continue to be made that they should be selected out and given an earlier access to the vaccine. As colleagues have made clear in the discussion so far, we are dealing with an extremely limited supply confidence and for the next small number of months we hope we will be concentrating on the initial groups. As we get supply, quarter 2 will look very different from quarter 1. I am not referring to any patient group here but trying to paint a picture of how we see things playing out. As we get to have a greater range of products and much more quantity to work with, we will quickly go down this list. These are not all large groups in the Government table of allocation strategy. It is only when one gets down towards the bottom part of that that one is into what my might call the other 4 million of the population. Probably the first million is encompassed within the first ten or so groups. We will make our way through those as rapidly as we can subject to supply. The difficulty, when supply is so limited, is selecting out groups on an ad hocbasis.

On the sequencing, as colleagues have said, this was developed through a process with the advisory committee. An ethnical framework is also applied to ensure it is appropriately balanced. The Government signed off on this. As everyone appreciates, we needed a framework like this because if we had not had it, it would have been an untidy position to manage. It is, should the Government decide to do so, open to be reviewed, probably through the same type of process through which it was developed, but it is not something that the Government sees as being reviewed regularly on the basis that one has to let it run out. As we learn and have more options available, we may be able to take a look at it again. The essential prioritisation, as we know, was based on the risk profile for groups of people.