Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The fantastic breakthrough with Covid-19 vaccines has given terrific hope to people the world over. In this country, everybody is anxiously awaiting tomorrow's Government announcement on the proposed roll-out of the vaccine. Last Tuesday, the Minister for Health released the first report on the proposed priority groupings for the vaccine. I note the list is referred to as a provisional list so I hope it means there is potential to make changes to the list. I want to make a case for that now. This relates to people with underlying health conditions. We know from analysis done on cases in terms of mortality, admission to hospital and admission to intensive care units that having one or more underlying health condition is a very significant factor. For that reason, it was quite surprising and disappointing that on the list of 14 cohorts of people, people with underlying conditions in their late 60s are fifth and adults with health conditions under 65 are seventh. It is very hard to understand why those cohorts are so far down the list. The Tánaiste should explain that to us and I hope the Government can revisit the list.

I am particularly concerned about the final cohort, which is the 14th grouping, and these are due to get the vaccine last. These are people under 18. I want to make the case for the very many people under 18 in this country who have serious underlying health conditions. I take the point that the vaccines have not been tested on children under 12 but I am talking about teenagers, or those aged between 12 and 18. A significant number of teenagers in this country have serious underlying health conditions. I spoke to the mother of one of them this morning, a 17-year-old girl who is a transplant recipient. Her mother explained what an awful year she has had since last March, when she had to cocoon, and how her life has been so drastically affected. Just yesterday the House discussed the mental health effects on young people in particular but this is especially pertinent in the case of young people with serious health conditions, as the impact is multiplied several times over. In this girl's case, her 19-year-old sister had to move out of the home because of the high risk involved. The girl is being homeschooled and this is having a major impact on her mental well-being.

It was a terrible blow to people in such circumstances to hear that they are last on the list of people to get the vaccine. I earnestly appeal to the Tánaiste and Minister for Health to please consider those categories of people who have had such a difficult time and bring them up the list to ensure they are early recipients of the vaccine.

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