OUR TRUST IN RULES IS BEING UNDERMINED AT CRUCIAL TIME

RULES are made to be broken. That is the message from Education Minister Joe McHugh, who seems to have given up on trying to solve the question of how to reopen schools in a way that health chiefs consider safe. You would imagine his department is made up of our best and brightest – but they are repeatedly failing the tests of Covid-19.

We are on a trajectory whereby Leaving Cert students will be able to go to Magaluf this August, even though sitting their exams that month was deemed too dangerous.

Remember back in early April we were told by the Taoiseach the Leaving Cert would go ahead “by hook or by crook”. Consistency isn’t what it used to be. But every sector is struggling to figure out how to obey the two-metre social distancing rule that the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) says is necessary to stem the spread of Covid-19.

Shops, offices, gyms, hairdressers and restaurants are all putting in place measures to restrict customers. Business Minister Heather Humphreys says this will be the ‘new normal’ as we adjust to living with the virus.

But the reality is that until schools are back in business, society will never be able to fully reopen. The two-metre rule will mean children can only go to school one day a week.

Even reducing it to one metre would mean some students would come in two days a week and others would come in three days a week. The root of the problem is that almost one in five students in primary school last year was in classes of 30 or more. Mr Varadkar has committed to coming up with “bespoke solutions” to get students back into the classroom.

Scientists no longer believe children are the dangerous vectors we were told of back in March. However, by simply saying schools can ignore the rules in order to function, the Government will be setting a troubling precedent. It could only happen in the absence of rigid adherence to social distancing.

Just wait until somebody tells the publicans. True, you can argue schools are a special case. But the hospitality sector will be quick to counter that it too is unique, with more than 200,000 jobs on the line. The transport sector is equally unlikely to be reticent about pointing out how the two-metre rule is a kiss of death to their sector.

So where does it end? It ends with us just abandoning the two-metre rule altogether because it’s not workable in the long term.

Throughout the pandemic our leaders kept us on message by being clear. Trust was built on the basis rules were balanced against risks. If this formula can now be safely swapped for an ‘it will be alright on the night’ approach, is it too much to hope they might share the reasons for their confidence?

The reality is that until schools are back in business, society will never be able to fully reopen