Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wholeheartedly endorse and echo the Deputy's praise of the nursing homes and for those working in the nursing homes. I add my thanks to the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, who is taking the lead on nursing homes, and who is doing a fantastic job and working very closely with the nursing home sector to ensure that it gets whatever help we can give it. This is a really tough situation. Many nursing home staff are out of work because of Covid-19, either directly or indirectly. A bit of hopeful news is that the number of staff who are out has decreased in recent days. The latest figures we have show that the number went from 1,800 to 1,700, and we hope to see this continue now that the vaccination programme is being rolled out, at least with dose 1. We are now moving into dose 2.

In the context of the specific hospital referred to by the Deputy, the roll-out is an operational matter for the HSE. The political involvement was, essentially, to set and agree the prioritisation. Cohort 2 comprises healthcare workers. Within that is a sub-prioritisation that was provided by the HSE. I will explain how it worked. In the first instance for the first few days, four hospital groups were involved in an initial roll-out, and that was widened very quickly to all of them. The volume of vaccines going to which healthcare workers in what hospitals is an operational matter determined by each hospital group. The Deputy referred to half of the healthcare workers in a specific hospital being done. That is not out of line with the total. The estimate is that the front-line healthcare worker cohort is some 150,000 people. As of last Sunday, nearly 77,000, which is about half, had been done. It will be more now because second doses have been going on this week for healthcare workers. It is the case that, based on the supply we have, nearly half of the members of that cohort across the country have been inoculated. I share the Deputy's-----

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