Nursing home residents will be the first people in Ireland to get access to the coronavirus vaccine under plans going to Cabinet today.

The broad outline of the vaccination plan will be discussed by Cabinet ministers today.

Nursing home residents will be top of the list.

They will be followed by frontline healthcare workers who are in contact with patients.

Third in line will be those over 70. They will be vaccinated on an age-based tiered basis.

Those over the age of 85 will get the vaccine first. They will be followed by people aged between 80 and 84-years-old, then those aged between 75 and 79-years-old and then the 70 to 74 age group.

The precise detail of how that'll be managed will be given by the vaccination roll-out taskforce which is due to report on Friday.

The Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan at the Department of Health, 19-11-2020. Image: Sam Boal/RollingNews

Last night, the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Tony Holohan said the taskforce still has a lot of work to do in the coming days.

“That’s the plan,” he said.

“There was a lot of hard work done by a lot of people over the weekend and will be over the course of the next number of days to reach that target but yes, I think our expectation is that we will reach that target.”

A significant communications strategy is also being prepared by the government to provide a fact and evidence-based approach to answering questions and concerns from the public.

The European Medicines Agency has until December 29th to decide whether to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for use in Ireland; however, a Government spokesman last night said the Irish plan would ensure it can be rolled out very quickly once that happens.

Meanwhile, the first vaccinations on the island of Ireland will be administered in the North later.

Health officials administering the jab will be the first to receive it, followed by residents in care homes.

Reporting from Seán Defoe