Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The change in policy with regard to close contact tracing does not make sense. If a child goes to a birthday party for half an hour, that child is counted as a close contact and has to be tested. However, if they are in school and in the same pod as another child all day, every day, for a week, all of a sudden they no longer count as a close contact. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is an approach of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. If we do not test children, we will not see just how widely Covid is running through our schools. It seems this decision will have quite negative consequences if it is not reversed. Parents should obviously be facilitated. Their lives should not be made more difficult. They should be facilitated in getting children tested but the idea that we should just turn a blind eye to the Covid transmission happening in the schools and treat schools as some sort of magical place where transmission does not happen does not make any sense.

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