Child protection rapporteur says school closures must be avoided at all costs 

'School closures are incredibly damaging to children so we have to do everything we can to avoid that. Are we really using all the measures available to us? It didn’t seem like we were a week ago but now it seems that we are slowly moving in that direction.' File picture: PA Wire

The Government’s Special Rapporteur on Child Protection says Ireland needs to be able to say that everything was done to ensure schools could stay open safely in the pandemic.

Professor Conor O’Mahony of University College Cork said school closures last year and this year because of the pandemic had an “absolutely appalling impact on children”. He added that schools need to be kept open now at all costs.

In recent days, mask-wearing has been implemented for primary children in third class and above, while vaccines for 5-11 year-olds have been approved by the European Medicines Agency.

Prof O'Mahony said: “Vaccines will take time so you can’t be too critical of that and masks have been implemented so it is good to see something being done. 

We need to really be able to look in the mirror and say we did everything in our power to make sure that schools could stay open safely.” 

He continued: “I am not a public health expert but at the same time, from following the issue reasonably closely, what I would see is that there is a menu of options available.” 

He listed contact tracing, adequate mechanical ventilation, Hepa filters and vaccines for children of primary school age as being very important.

Prof O'Mahony said essentially schools were reopened in September when the only option available to staff was classroom windows open.

“You have all these other tools in the toolbox which just weren’t thought of. Now masks have entered the equation.” 

Mechanical ventilation

He said mechanical ventilation such as the installation of air-conditioning units would involve a lot of works in schools, but he added: “We have known about this for a long time.” 

He said air-conditioning units are in place in lecture theatres in UCC.

Hepa filters could be a cheaper and quicker fix than installing mechanical ventilation in the short term, he said.

He added: “School closures are incredibly damaging to children so we have to do everything we can to avoid that. Are we really using all the measures available to us? It didn’t seem like we were a week ago but now it seems that we are slowly moving in that direction.” 

Referring to the closures since the pandemic arrived in Ireland, he said: “The impact on children of all ages was really, really detrimental and then that impact was not evenly spread either. It was fairly clear that the impact landed disproportionately on children who were already marginalised in some way. 

If you were a child with special educational needs, or if you were a child living in direct provision or a child living perhaps in disadvantaged circumstances at home with difficulty accessing technology, you were affected more severely than other children.” 

Prof O'Mahony acknowledged there were also school closures in other countries. But he said Ireland had longer school closures, particularly for second-level students, who were not in their school environment for more than 100 days between the school closures since the pandemic hit.