Mr. Damien McCallion:

As the Deputy knows, some of the cohorts are not area based. Nursing homes, healthcare workers and the over-70s were modelled up based on GP numbers for the over-70s. We were able to look at each area in the country and see how many over-70s were registered with each practice. That served as a reasonable basis for the number of people in each area and hence the distribution model to GPs for the over-70 population was built up on that.

The medical, high-risk and very high-risk groups have proved more challenging in that we had to work through our hospitals and with general practice to try to identify those people. Again, that is through all the individual hospitals throughout the country and also trying to work with general practice, which is just commencing for those groups. We do not have national disease registries so, essentially, we just pick those numbers up hospital by hospital and through practices.

For future age cohorts, as in those aged 70 and downwards, with 65 to 70 being the first group, we have numbers from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, for the total population. We are also able to see some of the regional numbers for populations around each geography and how that works. That will continue through all the age groups right down to the completion of the programme.