Government restrictions defy logic and show an utter lack of trust

THE expectation this week is that the Government roadmap will relax the rule on spectators, but only in a modest way.

I am reluctant to hammer either the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) or the Government, given the scale of the crisis we are facing, but I do believe that an ultra-cautious approach and garbled messaging has fuelled public disaffection.

This is particularly true in rural Ireland, not least where the impact of keeping pubs closed –

and the vast majority have never been in the position, or market, to double as restaurants – was very socially limiting.

That is changing now, but the policy was based on a lack of trust by the Government in their own regulations – no one has still answered why having a pint is safer with a plate of chips than without – and in people.

If that was not bad enough, the decision to ban spectators from games, while repeatedly telling the public that the safest place to socialise was outdoors, left people confused and disillusioned.

The number of cases that have been linked to sporting events appears very modest, which would seem to confirm that it is a lowlevel risk, so there is a lack of logic on the blanket ban on supporters.

I happen to think that the Irish people are worthy of trust. We’ve adhered to the lockdown, hand hygiene, face-mask usage and all the other advice given would seem to suggest that.

I was particularly struck this week while watching my students, in what are still relatively warm temperatures, keep their masks on at all times even though they were visibly discomforted in doing so.

It has been the arbitrary nature of the decisions that have grated with people and that is particularly true with the policy on banning spectators.

County stadiums with multiple entry and exit points being treated the same as the local pitch with a small stand and a singular entry/ exit point has left me, and so many others, baffled. I know that the point has been made that people congregating after games is the issue.

But if that is the case, how do you make that better by locking people out of an outdoor environment but allow them to go into pubs and watch games being streamed live?

I do not believe that we can just open up the gates, but I do believe that if we are to live with this, we can’t do so by living by arbitrary rules which are a brutishly blunt instrument.