Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I fully appreciate where the Deputy is coming from on those with cystic fibrosis. As he said, it is a relatively small cohort. NIAC looked very carefully not just at conditions but at the range of conditions and it had to make clinical judgments based on the impact that Covid appears to have on those groups. It did that with cystic fibrosis. It has identified different severities of cystic fibrosis and put them in as very high risk or high risk. It has done the same on obesity, diabetes and across different diseases and underlying conditions. It was trying to identify those at very high risk. When Professor Butler and I were presenting some of this, she was asked a very similar question to the one the Deputy has asked. From memory she said that the international evidence was that the severity of those with cystic fibrosis in the high-risk group was less than one might have originally thought, which is good news. The only reason the group was split was on the basis of how vulnerable they are to the disease. I can assure the Deputy that NIAC will keep that under constant review and if new evidence emerges on cystic fibrosis or other underlying conditions we will be updated accordingly.

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