Sir, – Prof Anne Scott, chair of the Covid-19 Evaluation Panel, argues that while the National Public Health Emergency Team was effective, its medical focus left the State “slow to recognise” the downstream impacts of school closures and isolation (“Public ‘trust chasm’ developed during Covid-19 pandemic”, Health, March 31st). Conversely, Michael McDowell characterises the State’s restrictions as a “colossal blunder” (Opinion, April 29th).
Yet both perspectives remain strangely insulated from the reality of the secondary school experience. The official “schools are safe” mantra – to which both sides of this debate seem to subscribe – was patently false to those living it.
By keeping secondary schools open, we likely prolonged the pandemic – a truth obscured by flawed data and political expediency. Furthermore, while closures impacted wellbeing, the enduring teenager mental health crisis suggests that they exacerbated a pre-existing fracture rather than creating it. By ignoring this, both evaluators and critics are arriving at the dubious conclusion that secondary schools should never have closed. – Yours, etc,
SEAN KEAVNEY,
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Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
