Seán Barrett: Reopening Ireland and the route to recovery

Low staff vaccination rates and lack of single rooms in hospitals threaten patient safety, while the health sector’s view it has been starved of cash is wrong, writes Seán Barrett.

Reopening Ireland is a welcome first step on a road to reform. The Covid measures imposed large costs on the economy as a whole and on certain sectors in particular. Given the urgency with which the measures were introduced a considerable power was given to the medical sector to impose punitive costs on other sectors including some which prima facie do not appear to be a major cause of the spread of the virus.