A newly-established government taskforce has met to discuss the potential rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine.
Its first meeting comes just days after Pfizer announced that the jab it's working on is more than 90% effective at preventing people from becoming infected with the coronavirus.
This morning, the European Commission signed a contract this morning to buy an initial 200 million doses.
Ireland would be in line to receive more than 2 million of those doses.
Pfizer is expecting to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses globally in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.
HSE chief executive Paul Reid says a team's now working on plans in case the vaccine is approved
He said the government taskforce met for the first time this morning and that they are focusing on the procurement of the vaccine, its distribution and the details of an immunisation programme.
