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Here are some of the things deemed essential enough to continue at Level 5 lockdown: elective laser eye surgery, bike rental, dry cleaning, takeaway burritos. Several categories of construction. You can get in your car right now and drive to a shop to buy a scented candle or a designer shower mat.
Not essential – though “central” and a “top priority” – is the return to school for the majority of the country’s one million children.
Some 124 special schools finally reopened last Thursday, while special classes in mainstream schools are due to restart on February 22nd. But everyone else is back in the all-too-familiar state of being completely in the dark – including, unforgivably, sixth years – after the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland walked away from talks on the Leaving Cert on Thursday.
A friend of mine was one of a number of parents in her area who decided to take action after they were sick of being fobbed off with the same vague noises about phased returns, and empty reassurances about how important their children's education is to everyone. They emailed their TDs and the Minister for Education Norma Foley.
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That is at the heart of the issue: the need to weigh the potential risks of Covid against the robust research on the negative impacts of schools being shut
Several got a surprisingly frank reply from Fianna Fáil TD Jim O'Callaghan.
“To be honest I am astonished that parents are so quiet about this,” he wrote. “I will keep advocating for it, but until such time as more parents get more vocally involved there is simply no pressure on Government to do so.”
Some were livid – here was a TD in the main Government party scolding parents for not shouting louder, and suggesting that unless they lobbied there would be “no pressure on Government” to make it happen.
But O’Callaghan was simply pointing out the reality of how decisions are made in Ireland. You might have reason, compassion, fairness, the Constitution, the Education Act 1998 and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on your side, but you get nowhere in this country without a lobby. It’s just a shame there’s no union for parents.
School closures
Parents have not been at the table for any of the decisions on school closures even though the Constitution acknowledges they are their children’s primary and natural educators.
O’Callaghan might find it “astonishing” they are “so quiet”, but nobody who has spent a day explaining and coaxing and reassuring and correcting and bribing, interspersed with periods of hiding in the bedroom to take a work call, would be remotely surprised. They’re already double – often triple – jobbing.
Where are they supposed to find the time and energy to start lobbying politicians?
The reality is that schools could be made much safer for reopening if the Government had the appetite to do so
Parents, said another mother who contacted me this week, “are beyond broken at this point”. Her son, who is profoundly physically disabled, attends a mainstream class in a mainstream school, where he relies on his eyes to learn. He has not been given a date to return.
“My son is vulnerable, so no one appreciates the risks more than I do. But we must balance the risk of Covid against the certainty that children are being seriously damaged by the lack of schooling,” she said in a letter to Norma Foley.
That is at the heart of the issue: the need to weigh the potential risks of Covid against the robust research on the negative impacts of schools being shut, some of which were laid out starkly in a clinical review by three paediatric experts last year.
OECD modelling suggests that the 2020 closures already reduced children’s lifetime earning potential by 3 per cent. The longer it goes on, the more pronounced the effect. Disadvantaged and vulnerable students will suffer most.
The Labour Party has called for a €100 million fund for additional tutoring for children to help them catch up, a bargain beside the €145 million spent last week alone on pandemic unemployment payments for 481,000 adults. But the interruption to the children's social and psychological development can't be solved by throwing money at it.
The reality is that schools could be made much safer for reopening if the Government had the appetite to do so. The risk to teachers would be minimised by prioritising them for early vaccination and making antigen tests available in schools, as I wrote here recently. This has been dismissed on the basis that teachers don’t work in an “unsafe environment”. Yet schools remain closed. Go figure that one out.
Utterly risk-averse
The reality is that the fallout from our meaningful Christmas has left many in Government feeling utterly risk-averse. They are paralysed by the fear of getting it catastrophically wrong again, unwilling to offer any glimmers of hope, unable to agree on a coherent strategy to back out of this lockdown.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar acknowledged as much. He told the Dáil "we haven't agreed an exact number" of cases we need to reach before easing restrictions and that "there really isn't any strategy unfortunately that avoids the risk of rolling lockdowns".
It's time we thought not just about the direct victims of Covid, but its indirect victims too
No sooner had Varadkar and Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien indicated that construction would reopen on March 5th, than Government sources were backtracking.
The Taoiseach can't even decide whether or not to go to New York for St Patrick's Day, preferring to leave it up to Joe Biden to invite him.
O'Callaghan's advice to parents reflected this stasis at the heart of Government on plans for reopening. Many would apparently prefer someone else was making the tough decisions. They want parents to fill the airwaves demanding the reopening, and the chief medical officer, Tony Holohan, to ultimately make the call. But we don't elect politicians so they can pass the buck.
It’s time we thought not just about the direct victims of Covid, but its indirect victims too. Children make up one quarter of this country’s population, and they’re in a state of emergency.