Mr. Paul Reid:

I will answer two parts of the Deputy's question and I might ask my colleague Dr. Henry to comment also. In the first instance, as the Deputy quite rightly noted, as the virus emerged in February and March the country was scared. I thank the Deputy and other local elected representatives for their support during that process. We at the HSE went out publicly and met parents and teams at various schools. The Deputy is correct to ask how we can manage that situation if there are schools with cases or potential outbreaks in the next few weeks. The first thing to say is we should plan on the basis that there will be positive cases and that it is likely there will be outbreaks throughout the country in different schools. That is the most likely scenario we have to work towards and it is the one on which we have been working with the Department of Education and Skills. We have given the Department clear guidance on its role, on communicating with parents and on our role, which is primarily led by our public health teams.

I will finish with a brief comment because Dr. Henry covered a bit of this earlier. I know that people have the urge to get a kind of checklist of what will happen in various situations, where boxes can be ticked, but our public health teams largely go in and assess each school, in this case, or organisation on its individual drivers of the transmission of the virus and various other factors. The primary driver of our communications will be through local public health teams, in conjunction with the Department of Education and Skills and local schools in how they communicate to parents. The public health approach involves, exactly as Dr. Henry outlined, a range of factors, including the numbers of cases, how rapid is the spread of cases, the impacts of the cases in terms of hospitalisations, what is happening in the community, what is the response of the local management of the school, and how we get reassurance of what measures were taken or are having an effect. All of that is geared towards not getting to a scenario of shutdowns. We will be driving a range of processes, public health led by our public health experts, but communication will be directly from the Department of Education and Skills and local schools to parents.