GAVAN REILLY: Post-lockdown good vibes leave good questions behind

Look, let’s not be churlish or beat around the bush. The plan for the reopening of the country is good news, and we all know it. You would have to be a joyless cretin on an enormous scale to be saddened by the idea of enjoying the freedoms that, until 14 months ago, we all considered to be non-negotiable basics.

But one of the functions of the media is to offer constructive criticism and honest feedback on the positions taken by government. So, with the precursor that everyone wants the option to go back to normality, some reflections.

Firstly: it’s been the case for the last four months that you have been allowed to meet up with others outdoors. The condition has been that those people must only be from one other household, and the notion was that you should only be outdoors if you’re indulging in your daily exercise inside the 5km limit. In short, the rule was conceived so that if you were going out for a walk or run, you didn’t have to go alone.

That throws up a natural question. If two people could meet outdoors for the last four months, despite the country being in peak lockdown, why weren’t they allowed to meet in gardens? The answer to that was: slippage. The Irish weather isn’t exactly barbeque friendly: sitting in someone’s garden won’t last long. Eventually the weather will turn, or someone will need the loo, and an outdoor chit-chat will migrate inside into an enclosed space where Covid would be more likely to spread. That, at least, was the logic.

In that light you’d wonder about the idea of now, belatedly, allowing three households to meet up in a garden now. Does the same logic not apply? Isn’t there still a risk – especially when the multiple households meeting are likely to be families – that people will migrate indoors for a while? And how plausible is it that someone who has just now been allowed to meet their family for the first time since Christmas, might make the drive back home from Dublin or Cork, stand around in a garden and… turn back again?

Secondly: there will never be agreement on the exact causes of what sent Ireland’s case numbers off a cliff at the end of December - unleashing a fire that we’ve only recently been able to get under control. But one theory held in high esteem around Government Buildings is the notion that people acted ahead of schedule last December and acted in high-risk ways for three weeks, when the Government’s own models only presumed one week of household socialising. (This also ascribes some logic to those who visited other households ahead of schedule: relaxing lockdown allows case numbers to rise, so why not make visits when case numbers are lower?)

That’s the theory of some significant figures, at least. So it would make you wonder about the logic shown by those same people, of announcing the new changes that little bit in advance of them taking effect. Isn’t there a serious prospect that people would use the Bank Holiday Monday to make journeys which would be totally permissible only a week later? And isn’t there a real risk that people would simply get carried away, and forget that intercounty travel is still a week away?

Please don’t assume from these questions that I’m some sort of crabby malcontent who doesn’t want people to be able to see their families again. I’m just wondering why some of the logic openly espoused by ministers has suddenly been ignored. I hope there’s a good reason, other than sheer exuberance.