Boris Johnson's unveiling of his country's plan to wriggle out of lockdown gave us an opportunity to indulge in our most beloved national sport: feeling superior to Britain. The heady rush of feeling like the grown-ups in the Irish Sea didn't centre on the 50-page plan, which was not wildly different to that of most European countries. It was focused on the wilfully vague "Stay Alert" slogan, and the confusing messaging around it, summed up by comedian Matt Lucas as: "Don't go to work! Go to work! Don't take public transport! Go to work! Don't go to work! Stay indoors! If you can work from home, go to work! Go outside! Don't go outside! And then we will, or won't, something or other."
Meanwhile, we had a clear road map, and a Taoiseach who would rather consult his crib sheet on the Late Late Show than get his facts wrong. Clever us.
Yet in reality there’s not much for us to be smug about. Sure, our Government’s more succinct plan showed commendable attention to detail. We now know that phone repair shops will open on May 18th; marts on June 8th; wrestling, roller-skating and bingo on August 10th.
But there was a small flaw in this model of clarity and caution. Actually, there were roughly 1.2 million of them. While all this abundantly prudent reopening is going on, who’s going to take care of the children?
If Britain got an exit plan devised by Dr Seuss, we got a childcare plan by Beckett
Because our Windolene-clear plan was lamentably foggy on the subject of childcare and schools. Creches can reopen, but only for the children of essential workers in a “phased manner” on June 29th. On July 20th, “creches for all other workers will reopen, but only for one day a week”. Schools reopen “some time after this”.
Vulnerable children
Johnson's messaging may have sounded as if it was drafted by Dr Seuss, but it was clear on childcare and education. Vulnerable children and those whose parents are critical workers can go to school now. Paid childcare by nannies and childminders can resume. From June 1st, schools and early years nurseries will reopen for more pupils, while families can create their own New Zealand-style social bubbles to share childcare.
If Britain got an exit plan devised by Dr Seuss, we got a childcare plan by Beckett – theatre of the absurd, in which thoughts are thrown around, but nothing is resolved.
The essential message, to paraphrase Lucas, was: Go to work! No, there’s no childcare! No, don’t ask the grandparents! If you choose not to go to work, you won’t get the pandemic unemployment payment, even if you have no real choice! So you’d better go to work!
Two weeks on, the situation is even more confused. A Hiqa report based on limited studies said there is no evidence children are super-spreaders, prompting Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to suggest reopening schools was among the safest things we could do.
The words were barely out when chief medical officer Tony Holohan shot him down. These were limited studies, and he was "not anticipating at this moment" any changes on schools reopening before September.
He is right in that the studies are limited. It is arguably not his job to worry about children’s long-term needs in the midst of a crisis. But based on the evidence we have, Varadkar is right too: opening schools and childcare would be among the safest things we can do.
Plan B
What that might look like is another matter. The childcare Plan B, to use the new “Predictive Cert” parlance – to pay the partners of essential workers to do it if they worked in the public sector – was abandoned on the basis that, as Varadkar admitted, it was “no good” and “inadequate”.
So it was on to Plan C: childcare workers would mind children of essential workers in their own homes. But this was scrapped when only six providers applied for it, the rest citing concerns about insurance and transmission.
Meanwhile, there’s no sign of Plan D.
If there’s a plan for non-essential workers it is languishing way, way down the alphabet.
The Government is capable of being decisive when it needs to, which makes the endless dithering, glacial decision-making, and propensity for what Mary Lou McDonald called “thinking out loud” on everything to do with children and their education unconscionable.
As they zoom in on issues such as insurance and focus on potential transmission risks, while ignoring the less headline-grabbing but more dire risks to vulnerable children, they’re fighting the wrong wars.
The pandemic has shown us that our rigid, anachronistic system of education and childcare is not fit for purpose. The Leaving Cert is broken. It is a terrible idea to insist that a child’s entire potential can be defined by a few unhappy hours in a stuffy PE hall. It has always been a terrible idea for individuals; it’s only now, when it went so badly wrong in aggregate, when we see why.
Insurance costs
Our childcare model is broken too. Even before Covid-19 insurance costs meant the sums were not adding up for providers or parents of the 202,000 children in childcare.
For too long the shuddering edifice has been propped up by an unseen, and largely unpaid, workforce of willing grandparents. The pandemic has made that unworkable.
We need to start planning for a public childcare system that is subsidised, affordable and available to those who need it. It will have to be paid for; tough decisions will need to be made by the next government about the fairest way to do that.
It is already a cliche to say that we have an opportunity to learn from this experience, and to construct a better society. Without an affordable, inclusive childcare system that protects vulnerable children and enables parents to work, the notion of a better society will never be more than a jaded trope.