Civil liberties, human rights and trust had the highest proportion of reported negative impacts during the pandemic, according to a public consultation by the State’s Covid evaluation.
In an end-of-year update, the evaluation, which was established by the Government to assess Ireland’s management and experience of the pandemic to learn for the future, said two public consultations have been conducted since May last year.
One was a general public consultation, which received over 7,000 responses, while the other was a separate consultation for young people, which received hundreds of responses.
According to the general consultation, the top three issues of most concern during the pandemic for respondents were mental health and wellbeing; relationships, social connections and community; and physical health.
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Across the areas that all respondents reported on, the areas with the highest proportion of reported negative impacts were civil liberties, human rights and trust; followed by mental health and wellbeing; work and time use; relationships and connections and physical health.
For students and parents or guardians, however, the area that was reported as being most negatively affected was education and development. The evaluation said this area had the highest proportion of reported negative impacts by a “considerable margin”.
The update said that life stage and circumstances “clearly matter” in terms of the impact of the pandemic.
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“Overall, a person’s financial situation (or level of difficulty in making ends meet) has considerable bearing across dimensions. Having very young children is also very impactful overall, especially for single parents,” the update said.
“Age is also very relevant, with younger people feeling considerably impacted across many dimensions. Other cohorts, such as carers and those with a disability, had strong negative impacts across some dimensions.”
It added: “For certain dimensions, such as civil liberties, human rights and trust, there were differing perspectives, such as across gender.”
According to the update, the evaluation team is due to begin a dedicated consultation on the response to Covid-19 in long-term residential care facilities.
Nursing homes were acutely affected by the pandemic, with visitors significantly curtailed as well as a high number of deaths in these centres.
The forthcoming consultation survey will speak to: residents’ relatives/significant others; bereaved relatives who lost loved ones in nursing homes during the pandemic; all staff members, including director of nursing and person in charge; and others such as GPs and geriatricians.
Furthermore, the chair of the evaluation team will also hold private group sessions with relatives who suffered bereavement during the public health crisis.
In the spring, a round-table event with national and international experts focused on health and wider decision-making approaches will take place.
Following this, there will be private sessions with officials responsible for supporting the management of the pandemic response and in due course private sessions with key decision-makers will be held, the update added.
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