As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, it is now crystal clear that vaccination is the most important method by far of avoiding serious illness.

Yet nationally, we have side-stepped imposing any obligation on people to take the vaccine.

While in Austria, vaccination is scheduled to become mandatory in the spring, here we are reluctant to go down this route and civil liberty groups have left us in no doubt that they would strongly oppose such a policy.

That’s fine, but there is no escaping the fact that a large proportion of the occupants of intensive care unit beds, as well as COVID-19-related hospital admissions, come from the small unvaccinated cohort.

Most people must have been horrified that a critical transplant operation, due to take place in the Mater Hospital in Dublin last week, could not go ahead because there was no intensive care bed with the associated staff available.

To be vaccinated or not is, so far at any rate, a personal decision, but should the exercise of that personal choice carry some consequences?

It is a safe assumption that at least some of the facilities were taken up by those who chose not to get vaccinated but still expected to be and were fully cared for, in the event of them catching COVID-19 and needing acute care. One has to ask if this is really fair. To be vaccinated or not is, so far at any rate, a personal decision, but should the exercise of that personal choice carry some consequences?

Clearly, if the medical advice to an individual is that they have a condition that, in having the vaccine, would be potentially harmful, then of course they have to do without it and live with the consequences as best they may.

Granted, the same argument could be made in treating those who have made all kinds of damaging lifestyle choices

Where there is no objective reason not to become vaccinated, one has to ask should the same entitlement to full unrestricted treatment exist, taking into account the stress put on physical resources and stretched medical staff.

Granted, the same argument could be made in treating those who have made all kinds of damaging lifestyle choices, such as excess alcohol or tobacco consumption, but the refusal to have a COVID-19 vaccination is a much more deliberate choice than a habit that may develop over many years.

At a minimum, it might not be unreasonable to expect a financial contribution to the cost of such expensive medical treatment, given that it is as a result of a voluntary personal decision.