Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his questions. I agree with him wholeheartedly that loneliness, isolation and anxiety are a problem. People are really concerned at the moment and we have never seen such high levels of issues from the low impact of mental health challenges. The HSE's psychosocial framework is particularly focused on healthcare staff. That does not just include staff in the HSE sector; supports and counselling are available across all the sectors, including for those working in nursing homes. The Deputy referred to the number of healthcare staff who are off work on Covid leave. There are another 2,000 of them in nursing homes and 300 mental health staff.

The Deputy asked whether there will be a revised vaccination timetable. I am sure there will be but I do not know about it yet. The high-level task force is meeting today. All of this news broke yesterday and the only information I have is that the roll-out for over-85s, which was to commence mid-February, is still planned to go ahead. Obviously, it is going to be logistically way more difficult now because the AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored at room temperature whereas the BioNTech vaccine has to be stored at -70 °C. It will be more challenging but I am sure we will have a lot more detail in the next 48 hours.

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