Government warned during second Covid wave of ‘implications’ to closing schools

The Government was warned by its own consultants during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic of “significant implications” to closing schools again, newly published documents show.

The warning came from EY Consulting, which pointed to findings that 17 per cent of women might have to give up work if primary schools closed again. In contrast, only 4 per cent of men would be similarly affected.

Meanwhile, 36 per cent of adults with a secondary school student had a child that was worried about having fallen behind due to the original Covid-induced school closures in spring 2020, EY pointed out in November that year.

In the event, due to spiralling case numbers, the Government closed schools in January 2021 and they did not fully reopen until April.

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At the time of EY’s briefing to Government, the return of children to school coincided with a second wave of Covid-19 cases. EY pointed out that trends in other European countries indicated that schools may not be to blame for the increase.

US studies suggested appropriate testing and quarantine measures could prevent clusters occurring in school settings, it also advised. “Testing in schools could be difficult, but random testing could help,” it said.

The documents were made available through Freedom of Information to righttoknow.ie and have been published on thestory.ie. The Department of the Taoiseach originally refused to release most of the records but changed their position after the case was appealed to the Information Commissioner, the group said.

The documents suggested the use of a social distance index to measure people’s adherence to public health guidelines on a rolling basis. The index would have captured mobile phone data by counting phones in tiles of 25 metres every 15 minutes, thereby monitoring adherence to social distancing and travel.

The Department did not proceed with the proposal.

The consultants hypothesised that a sharp rise then seen in many counties was caused by specific events, non-compliance and behaviours rather than the level of restrictions not having the desired impact. They gave the example of GAA county finals wins in Cavan and Meath having contributed significantly to spread.

It was “generally accepted” there was a link to alcohol, in pubs and off-licences, for many spread events, according to the documents. And while the requirement to spend €9 on a meal in a pub was intended to reduce the potential for large amounts of alcohol to be consumed there, the concern was that “this is simply shifting to off-licence and house party environment”.

Galway has a 50 per cent smaller population than Cork but at one point had 65 per cent more alcohol-related contacts, the authors noted.

While opening of restaurants and bars had been linked to a rise in cases, operating with restrictions “may not significantly increase spread”.

Religious ceremonies such as weddings, funerals and communions accounted for a high number of contacts while personal services such as hairdressers and beauticians accounted for relatively low numbers of contacts, they found.

The three phases of reopening of retail and construction between May and July 2020 “did not have a significant impact on cases”, they noted.