Professor Susan Michie:

It was originally a Scottish name. I am a part of the United Kingdom Government's Scientific Advisory Group in Emergencies, SAGE, specifically the behavioural science advisory group. I am also a member of Independent SAGE, which works in parallel with the Government's SAGE committee.

Independent SAGE has really considered the evidence for many of the issues that have arisen. The three overarching concerns we have been addressing is how to minimise death and disability, how to promote and help to maintain as many jobs and get the economy going as efficiently and as soon as possible and also how to open schools safely. When it comes to jobs and workplaces, we are also talking about safety.

Our view is we have approximately three to four weeks before the autumn, cold weather and a decrease in the level of ultraviolet radiation sets in that will pose new challenges for us in driving down Covid-19. The influenza season will also set in. We speak about elimination but I will clarify the terminology, as I believe Professor Heneghan was referring to eradication. That is not what we are talking about; we are talking about elimination.

I could use the analogy of fires. In Ireland, like the United Kingdom, there is a zero fire policy, which means we want no fires and we take every measure we can to ensure, as much as we can, that there are no fires. However, we know fires will occasionally break out and we have systems in place to jump on those fires quickly so they do not spread into the awful examples we saw in Australia last year arising from large forest fires. That is what elimination and zero-Covid means.

I will try to add to what has already been said.

We feel very strongly that health and wealth should not be pitted against each other. We want to increase business and consumer confidence. To achieve both of those things we need transmission rates in the community to be at an absolute minimum alongside effective test, trace and isolate systems and, as has been previously said, border controls. As a behavioural scientist, I am especially interested in the behavioural aspects of the test, trace and isolate system, which needs to be addressed to make it effective. I am sorry to say we have not yet achieved that in the UK for various reasons which we may get on to.

Would the population really go with what is needed to eliminate coronavirus and reach a Covid-zero situation? It would mean over the next three or four weeks taking every measure, which includes restrictions and probably more restrictions than Ireland has at the moment on the basis that it would then allow the certainty and confidence which the business community and the population in general so want to be able to get on with their lives and their jobs.

The experience in Ireland, as in the UK and many other countries, is that when it is explained to the population why measures are needed, even though those measures require sacrifice on their behalf, they will adhere to them as we saw with the original lockdown. A couple of things are really important here. It is not only telling people what to do, but explaining the rationale so that people understand it. I believe that people would understand a zero-Covid policy if it was put to them. Also required is trusted leadership to communicate that in appropriate ways to the population and to do so with an understanding of which parts of the population find adherence most challenging. In the UK, as I suspect is the case in Ireland, it is young people and especially young men. It is very important to tailor strategies to those groups, using role models of various kinds like sportspeople, musicians and other celebrities.

This needs to be done in partnership and in consultation with the community so that as much as possible the policies are thought through together and the strategies to achieve the aims of the policies are co-produced with the community and not imposed from the top down on the community. I am happy to expand more on these points and other points during discussion.