Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his questions. As with other Members and people across the country, he is rightly raising issues for those who are more vulnerable, including people with CF, people with underlying conditions such as Down's syndrome and their carers. If the Deputy looks through the prioritisation, he will see that one of the groups we are coming to as quickly as possible is people with certain underlying medical conditions. With regard to their carers, the position at the moment is that if the carers are in paid employment, as many are, they are deemed front-line healthcare workers and are being vaccinated at the moment. They are part of cohort 2. Indeed, as the Deputy referenced, for long-term residential care settings for disability, including section 38 and section 39 organisations, residents over 65 and the staff are included in cohorts 1 and 2. They are part of the plan at the moment. Residents over 65 have been vaccinated and the staff are being vaccinated now. They are being prioritised now.

Forgive me if I have the details wrong, but if there is a particular disability community group that the Deputy is referring to, there are two things the group can do. It can engage directly with the HSE centrally, because these are operational matters for the HSE. Alternatively, a local group could engage with the local hospital group. That would be the place to go because that is where those operational decisions are being made. I would certainly be happy to facilitate that if it was helpful.

I wish to make a point with regard to the firefighters. I cannot speak for the Lord Mayor or the particular incident; I have no knowledge of it whatsoever. However, there is an important principle we have to protect with the vaccination roll-out. There cannot be political interference by me, any Member or any elected politician. Our role is to set policy. We have done that by signing off on the prioritisation schedule recommended by the national immunisation advisory committee and endorsed by the national public health emergency team. After that, the distribution according to policy is an operational matter for the HSE and there should be no political interference in that process.

Certainly, at a policy level it is our job to ensure that the policy is right and appropriate. I can offer an example relating to the current prioritisation. One task I have asked NPHET to look at is a profile of those who have been hospitalised with Covid-19. A look at those profiles is one proxy for those most at risk. We can then map that against the prioritisation to ensure the prioritisation does indeed cover those who are getting very sick and being hospitalised by Covid-19.

There are different firefighters in different areas. Obviously, those responsible are looking at paramedics and they may indeed be looking at the firefighters themselves. Again, each of the hospital groups is putting detailed plans together and will communicate them, as they have been doing.

I agree with the Deputy on holidays. Right now, there is meant to be no non-essential foreign travel and no non-essential domestic travel beyond 5 km either. The Cabinet agreed on Tuesday to a range of significant additional measures to clamp down on exactly the issue raised by him.

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