Covid-19: State at most precarious stage of pandemic yet

Good morning – schools remain closed, industrial relations unrest abounds, parents are being pitted against teachers while the State remains at all-time high levels of infection, and the economy survives only thanks to an intravenous line of Government borrowing. Thank God we’ve seen the end of that terrible 2020, though, right?

A new year has brought little in the way of respite from the same bad news stories that burdened the news agenda last year.

The State is at perhaps a more precarious stage of the pandemic than ever before. As we report in our lead story this morning, the Government has failed at the second time of asking to secure the support of unions for even a limited reopening of schools for children with additional needs.

Although there will be more talks, this does not augur well for the series of serious challenges facing the Government in the weeks and months ahead as it tries to reopen society and the economy without losing control of the virus.

Plans to resume classes this week for students with additional needs abandoned

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Covid-19 vaccinations to be prioritised for paramedics and firefighters

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Covid-19: Almost half of recent arrivals did not confirm place of residence

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Student nurse says proposed €100-a-week allowance is a ‘slap in the face’

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Presuming a deal can be struck to reopen special schools before the end of the month, the agenda will merely move onto the next massive job – in the first instance reopening the wider school system. Then it will be construction, then onto other parts of the economy and so on. Every time something is achieved, it immediately becomes another plate to be kept spinning – it will take much political skill and dexterous policymaking to prevent one, more or all of them from crashing to the ground.

Our lead is here.

Despite all the doom and gloom, 2021 does hold out the promise of widespread vaccination programmes. However, their management is fraught with political risk and has kicked off a series of political firestorms that show no signs of abating.

Last week, there was ongoing rancour over the pace of the rollout; once that improved, the focus moved onto controversies over family members of staff being vaccinated, while frontline healthcare workers around the country complain, with some justification, they are being asked to work without being jabbed yet.

Hopes for a smooth rollout rest on two key factors: securing enough supply from drug companies, and making sure we can build a system to get the vaccines into the arms of five million people in the shortest order possible.

The Government has promised the only constraint on the rollout will be supply, but you can expect that to be tested as a mass mobilisation and logistical effort unlike anything in the history of the State gets under way. This effort will use new or untested systems, at scale, under time pressure and under unrelenting public scrutiny.

You may have heard of the phrase “building a plane while flying it”; this is a bit like doing that – but simultaneously taking a course in advanced aeronautics and designing the airframe to boot.

The EU has dented Ireland's hopes of bringing in early supplies of AstraZeneca, however. Simultaneously the bloc has asked that 70 per cent of adults be vaccinated against Covid-19 by summer.

Meanwhile, vaccines will be prioritised for paramedics and firefighters.

Health editor Paul Cullen is writing in the world pages about Israel's vaccine rollout.

Changing of the guard at White House

There is a changing of the guard in the White House, with Donald Trump departing the Oval Office and Irish-American Joe Biden moving in.

Mr Biden left nobody in any doubt over his strength of feeling for his ancestral homeland, quoting James Joyce as he left Delaware for Washington. What’s the odds of a cupla focal for his inauguration speech? Or maybe a quote from another famous Irish writer? If only our various taoisigh had left him some unused quotes from their speeches across last year. Oh well, there’s always Mean Girls.

Suzanne Lynch's news write-up is here.

Her analysis of how Irish-America will be at the heart of the Biden administration is here.

Former Irish diplomat Jim Sharkey on what Ireland should expect from a Biden White House is here.

Best reads

Remember the leak of the GP contract by then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar? Well, it seems around the same time a copy was winging its way to the head of a GP group, the relevant minister was struggling to lay hands on his own copy. Pat Leahy has more.

Miriam Lord on how the return of the Seanad had the country reaching for the tonic.

Michael McDowell on how church, State and society bear responsibility for the stain, and reparations, of the mother and baby homes.

Sally Hayden reports from Kampala on an offline election.

Playbook

First up in the Dáil is Sinn Féin’s Private Members business – a motion on pay for student nurses and midwives. No doubt the Opposition will be eager to quiz the Minister for Health on his disappearing Cabinet memo on the matter, which was covered extensively in the Tuesday edition of this parish’s newsletter and went walkabout from the Cabinet agenda at the last minute.

The original memo set out key points of a report to the Minister, commissioned before Christmas, which found pandemic payments worth around €5.4 million should be handed over to student nurses. The memo also revealed a Department of Health review last November argued there was no evidence to support claims that student nurses were exploited during their placements in hospitals. Expect polite entreaties from the Opposition as to what happened.

That’s at 10am, followed by Leader’s Questions at midday. At lunchtime, a Government motion on the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (the Brexit deal) will be voted on, followed immediately by statements on the report of the mother and baby homes commission. The Dáil is set to adjourn shortly after 6.30pm.

It will be a quiet day around Leinster House and the Convention Centre, in line with reduced hours and restricted access due to the galloping pandemic. No business is scheduled for the Seanad, while all committees will be meeting behind closed doors, with public sessions only scheduled for Friday of this week.

Private meetings are scheduled for the housing, climate action, budgetary oversight, children, transport and health committees.