The Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has expressed confidence that many of the groups most vulnerable to Covid-19 will be in a position to be vaccinated in the first quarter of next year and said it would have a profound impact on the nature of the illness.

Speaking to the Select Committee on Enterprise Trade and Employment on Wednesday night he said it was "really encouraging to see so many companies developing a vaccine".

He stressed that people in nursing homes, health care workers and people in congregated settings such as prisons would be first in line when they were being administered.

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He cautioned that the vaccines being developed were new and he stressed that it was not yet clear how the processes involved in administration will work.

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“We will see how it goes but I would be very optimistic we will be able to vaccinate the most at risk in the first quarter of the new year. Science will save the day, as they say,” he said.

Mr Varadkar also told the hearing that he did not believe a large number of employers were pressurising their staff to return to their workplaces in the face of Level 5 restrictions, which mandate that people should work from home where possible.

He did acknowledge that the numbers travelling to and from workplaces in the second lockdown were higher than in the first one last spring but expressed the view that there there were multiple reasons for that.

Essential workers

Responding to a question from Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly, he said that the definition of essential workers had been made considerably broader in the second lockdown and now included teachers, childcare workers, construction workers amongst other sectors.

He also said there were people “who wanted to be let back into their offices” for many reasons including cramped conditions and home and for mental health reasons.

He suggested to Ms O'Reilly that people who felt they were being unduly pressurised into returning to workplaces could lodge a complaint with the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

In response the Sinn Féin TD pointed out that the time lag between lodging a complaint with the WRC and it being heard could be as long as a year.

Under further questioning Mr Varadkar committed to making contact with the commission to establish how many complaints had been lodged with it by people who had felt like they were being forced into workplaces by their employers.

Mr Varadkar also told the Committee people were "statistically safer at work than at home". However when pressed by Solidariity/People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy on the comment he conceded that while he had said it was "probably not correct". The clarification was accepted by Mr Murphy.

Over the course of the session, the Tánaiste also warned businesses that they needed to do more to ready themselves for Brexit no matter what shape it takes.

“Free trade agreement or no free trade agreement, business is going to change on January 1st,” he said.

And he told the select committee that 85 Enterprise Centres across the State would be in line for grants of between €10,000 and €150,000 to make them “Covid ready” and he said “all parts of the country will benefit from that”.