As Ireland begins to reopen this is no time for us to let our guard down

AFTER over 100 grim days in lock down, news that the road map to reopening the country is being drastically shortened has been greeted with something approaching jubilation. It is a measure of what the Coronavirus has done to our nation that the reopening of shops and a permission to travel within our own counties has been greeted as though an army of occupation has been driven from our shores.

A brave new world of queues, facemasks, closed streets and perspex screens awaits us as we go about our daily business but in the ‘new normal’ that seems strangely welcome.

The suggestion that masked and gloved people would happily form ‘ration line’ queues outside a butcher’s shop or sit in plastic ‘snugs’ in the pub would have seemed nothing short of ludicrous just a few short months ago, but here we are.

All is changed and changed utterly.

For the foreseeable future our towns and cities will look and feel like they’ve stepped back in time and behind the Iron Curtain.

And yet, for all that, there is still understandable joy across Ireland this week.

For all the changes we face in our daily lives they are surely better than life under lockdown. Indeed, who really cares if a queue outside the supermarket or socially distant pint is the cost we must pay for seeing our friends and loved ones again.

The people of Ireland have suffered a deep trauma that has shaken us to our very core but now an end is finally in sight. We still have a long way to go but for the first time in months it feels as though we can look to the future with a degree of hope.

While recent months have been remarkably difficult for everyone, Leo Varadkar and his caretaker government deserve great credit for how they have steered the country through an unprecedented crisis.

They deserve praise now too for loosening the shackles of the lockdown and putting Ireland on the road to recovery.

The decision to ramp up the reopening of Ireland was a brave one and to a large extent it is a gamble. There is a very real risk that COVID-19 could make a comeback and we could see a second wave of cases.

It is, in no small part, up to all of us to make sure that doesn’t happen and that our nation’s recovery is a success.

Since the first days of the lockdown the people of Ireland have shown an exceptional level of resolve and an extraordinary willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to see off the threat of COVID-19.

That effort and sacrifice has proved worthwhile with the virus now largely under control and many thousands of lives saved.

It has now been rewarded by the government who in loosening the lockdown have placed their faith in the people to keep up the fight and not throw away all we have achieved.

Life will not return to normal for some time – if indeed it ever does – but as we adjust to our new freedoms we must remain responsible. Almost 1,700 Irish people have lost their lives to COVID-19. Honour their memory and stay the course.