Professor Philip Nolan:

It is fair to say that important lessons have been learned. The two lessons that have been learned are that if we react quickly we can bring the disease back under control. That is what the Kildare, Laois and Offaly outbreaks showed. The second thing they show is that if there is a very large outbreak the risk of diffusion into households and communities is higher than if there are smaller outbreaks. There was a greater volume of cases and spread into household settings in Kildare than in Laois and Offaly. In response to an earlier question, this could have happened in any county in the country. Most counties in the country have the kind of workplace settings that are capable of amplifying this disease. Quite a lot has been learned within those settings.

For the reasons Dr. Glynn alluded to earlier, in terms of the reopening schools there is a level of assurance. It is very unlikely that if a child were to bring a disease into a school he or she would spread it to another child. It is then unlikely that the child would bring the virus home and spread it back into his or her home. We need to remember that adults moving around in society, in workplaces and other settings, are more likely to transmit it between households via adult-to-adult transmission. In no way is it is an experiment. It is a carefully judged prioritisation of what we need to get back to, having done a very detailed risk assessment.