Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is one of the most important questions with which we are dealing in the vaccination programme at present. I have asked the Department of Health and NIAC to take a look at the prioritisation. Given what we know now about the vaccines and that the programme is under way, I do not think we can often make changes to the prioritisation list. If we are making changes, I think we will probably do that once. I have great sympathy with the position of those people to whom the Deputy referred. I have made my view on that issue clear to the Department of Health.

NIAC is now doing detailed work regarding exactly the group about which the Deputy just spoke. Those people are currently in cohort 7, and that is a large group comprising people with underlying conditions. To address the Deputy's specific point, a group within that cohort are really high risk and that is an urgent situation. Over the next few days, therefore, NIAC will report back and we will be looking at that information, and that was what I was referencing in my opening statement. I refer to wanting to be able to report back to the House, ideally next week, on that exact point the Deputy has raised.

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