Rollout must be fair and seen to be fair. Any deviation will only fan the f lames of dissent

THE vaccines currently being administered by the HSE are the only real weapon in our fight against Covid-19. They are also scarce. It is is not the Government’s fault that they are scarce. It is, however, their responsibility to ensure whatever supply is available is distributed fairly. The priority system was introduced to ensure that those who most need the coronavirus vaccine receive it first. To date, that does not include HSE staff who have no interaction with Covid-facing staff or patients. But today, this newspaper reports that some non-frontline staff working for the HSE’s Community Healthcare Organisation Dublin North City and County also received their first doses of vaccine, doses to which they were not entitled.

When we put this to the HSE last week, it was denied that this was pre-arranged. Instead, they claimed that some vaccine doses were left unused, and rather than waste them, they were administered to non-frontline staff called in at short notice.

Our information, they said, was ‘inaccurate’.

Yet on the very day they gave us that statement, more staff from the organisation were vaccinated, and we are reporting today that this was formally arranged in advance.

They have eventually admitted that our information is correct.

The HSE guidelines on who should get the vaccine, and when, are explicit and, as things stand, only those in face-to-face contact with patients and service users, ot those who are in contact with those frontline staff, are covered. Representatives of homecare workers, who are not all yet vaccinated, are calling this what it is: queue jumping.

We understand that everyone is anxious to be vaccinated, not least teachers who are nervous about the return to school of pupils en masse. They are calling to be moved up the priority level, as is their right.

Hence transparency is absolutely vital, because news of queue jumping spreads quickly, and fans the flames for those who reject lockdown and all the restrictions imposed on them. It is clear this sort of behaviour is grist to their mill – if the HSE is not playing by the rules, why should we?, they will say.

That is not a scenario we wish to contemplate. We have been told endlessly that we’re all in this together, and that narrative has for the most part led to the greatest show of solidarity in this country in living memory. In poll after poll, the people of Ireland have told us that while they do not care for the restrictions imposed on them, especially the 5km exercise limit, they are holding firm. We do so because we believe that lockdown, allied to a fast and fair rollout of mass vaccination, is the only shot we have at seeing a return to more normal lives.

The flipside of that is that people cannot be taken for fools either. Despite new laws, our compliance is still earned rather than imposed. We only have to look to the events on Dublin streets last week to realise protest is growing, and any further evidence of queue jumping will only swell those numbers.

If we expect everyone to play by the rules, that means everyone.