We need more than just a wing and a prayer to reopen for business safely
IN THE 11 weeks since schools and crèches closed, the Government has broken every promise it made in relation to the provision of childcare for essential workers. Why should anyone believe its revised claims now? On March 12, schools and crèches closed their doors, leaving hundreds and thousands of families to swiftly cobble together their own haphazard childcare arrangements.
For those who could work remotely from home, the closures, while extremely disruptive, were not disastrous. However, essential workers, who are under most strain and at most risk in their jobs, have been utterly abandoned.
To date, there have been two attempts by the Government to address this issue, both of which were abandoned within days of their announcements.
On April 22, six weeks after schools closed, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced a scheme to provide paid leave to public sector staff whose partners were healthcare workers. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation branded the plan “worse than irrelevant” as the proposal would “do nothing for the vast majority of nurses and midwives”.
After that measure was quietly binned, Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone announced a new scheme on May 6 to provide essential workers with 45 hours of childcare a week in their own homes from May 18. Ms Zappone told the Dáil her department had been “planning for this for a number of months” and had “listened to suggestions from the childcare sector”. Despite this rigorous planning and listening exercise, that scheme was also shelved within days when only six childcare providers signed up to take part.
Instead, we have now been told essential workers will definitely have their childcare needs addressed by June 29. No one is any the wiser about how this will actually be done, except that it may involve something called a Norwegian model.
The abject failure of the State to provide childcare for a relatively small proportion of the labour force, those that it cannot function without, does not bode well for its ability to roll out services for other working parents later this summer.
It took the UK, where the response to the coronavirus has been utterly shambolic, 48 hours to come up with a solution to this problem back in March. There, some schools and crèches have remained open for two cohorts of children – those who have a parent who is an essential worker or vulnerable children.
Why has something similar not been operating here for the past three months? Has such a scheme been ruled out by public health advice? Unions? Or is it that the State doesn’t own the vast majority of our schools and crèches and can therefore not easily put in place such an obvious solution?
Childcare providers were loath to sign up to the Government’s latest scheme, as their insurers warned them if they signed up they would not be covered for Covid-19-related claims. In contrast, in Northern Ireland a letter of indemnification for Covid-19-related incidents was immediately issued by the Department of Health to those facilities that have remained open to provide childcare.
If the department was planning the scheme for a number of months, why didn’t anyone anticipate insurance would be a problem? And, why was no solution ready when it did materialise as an issue?
A full State indemnity is being provided to teachers who are grading Leaving Cert papers. Yet, the State refused to provide one to childcare workers asked to go to the homes of essential workers and care for their children for 45 hours a week.
At the heart of the failure to provide a childcare plan which works for essential workers is a failure to adequately liaise with those involved before various schemes were announced. Belatedly, Ms Zappone has set up an ‘advisory group on reopening early learning and care and school-age children services’. It held only its second meeting last week and has its work cut out.
According to a new survey from the Federation of Early Childhood Providers, nearly 90pc of their members have no plans to reopen on June 29. Meanwhile, a whopping 98pc said a “lack of clear” guidance” from the department had increased their “anxiety” about the future of their service.
Difficulties experienced in the childcare sector are a microcosm of problems being endured all over the country as business owners try to plan for some return to normality at the end of this protracted lockdown.
Ministers are fond of telling us we have to find some way to live with the virus, but this sage advice is never accompanied by any specifics on how we are supposed to do this. We now have a relatively vague roadmap to lead us out of the lockdown in five stages, but many small and medium businesses have no idea how they can open so they are both safe and viable.
Yesterday, publicans stated if the two-metre social distancing guideline remains, they would lose 87pc of standing capacity if bars were to reopen. Restaurants have identical issues. Schools, which already have among the largest class sizes in Europe, have no prospect of reopening if the two-metre rule applies when children are due to return in September.
Lives and livelihoods are going to be on hold indefinitely, with all the consequent damage to the economy and society that entails, unless we are imminently provided with detailed plans to emerge from the lockdown that amount to more than a date accompanied by a wing a prayer.
Closing down the economy, although seismic, was relatively easy. Opening it up again is going to be extremely difficult – a task made even harder without a government in place to take decisive action.
Difficulties in the childcare sector are a microcosm of problems being endured all over the country