The health minister says despite the imminent roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland, normal life will not resume immediately.
If the European Medicines Agency (EMA) signs off on the vaccine by the end of the month, it could be distributed as early as mid-January here.
According to the Irish Examiner, an expert report is due to be handed over to government tomorrow on how the mass-immunisation should be carried out.
"It's actually a question that I have been discussing at length with the public health officials in the department because it's the question everybody has: 'When can we put this god awful disease behind us and get back to living normal lives?'
"We have an expert group called the National Immunisation Advisory Committee, and that's the group that advises government on the flu vaccine, the HPV vaccine, and they are our experts on the best way to do this.
"Their two objectives were: how do we do the prioritisation to save as many lives as possible, and to reduce serious illness or other layers as it were starting at the top with those over the age of 65.
"What they were looking at was saying, essentially, who is the highest risk to the virus? Obviously, we know there's people over 65 and nursing homes and other long term care facilities, who tragically in the first wave in more than one in every two Covid deaths came from that group so obviously that's a really important group."
Mr Donnelly added that Ireland will begin rolling out the Pfizer vaccine within a number of days if the vaccine is approved on December 29.
Approaching Christmas, people have been warned to restrict their movements if returning from other countries.
