The Irish Examiner View: Unity more important than ever

As the silence, like the comforting stillness of a fall of snow blanketing the country, becomes almost normal, established ideas are falling away. Some may be gone forever, others are on hold.

There aren’t many ideas we recoil from as forcibly as the one of people left to die comforted only by the inadequate if genuine kindness of strangers. The idea that those we hold dear might, in their last moments, be denied the warmth and reassurance — and validation — of loved ones is more than difficult. It adds greatly to the trauma of this wretched pandemic. For some bereaved people that cruel separation may become the over-riding memory of these difficult times.