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Don't ignore your health concerns. Our expert team is ready to help. Well, difficult times locally, cabinet yesterday evening introduce further measures to stop the spread of covid-19, including a continued closure of schools for the rest of the month and halting, to some extent, construction. To give us her reaction to the latest wave of restrictions, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald is on the line. Mary Lou McDonald, good morning and welcome.

Good morning, Pat. Now, it's sometimes hard to keep track of all the changes and the restrictions, but what did you make of the decisions yesterday? Writ large, of course, the continued closure of schools with exemptions for the Leaving CERT students and for some with special needs?

Well, firstly, happy New Year to you and to your listeners. And I'm very conscious of the fact that we are now into very difficult times for people.

The new restrictions certainly represent tough medicine, but it is necessary medicine. I mean that the rates of transmission speak for themselves.

I now understand that we've gone over the 1000 mark in terms of covid hospitalizations and our frontline services are under excuse me, immediate and growing pressure.

So I think all of us knew that there had to be strong intervention. So I welcomed the fact that that has happened. I am, however, extremely alarmed that it seems that the government is still not prepared, that there had been very, very little planning.

We listened to confusion for a number of days and different messages coming from different sections of government on many issues, including that issue of schools that you've mentioned part.

And I take a very straightforward view that where we're asking citizens and sectors, businesses, families, carers, all of society to ensure a very strict restrictions and to take very tough medicine in a scenario like that, the very least people deserve is a government that is prepared, is organized and is coherent. And I think in the area of the schools and I'm speaking here as much as a parent as anything else, all of us want our children, our young people, our young adults at school, that that is the best possible situation.

But we know now with the with the level of transmission, with toll controversy, questions around the new very intense strain, particularly from Britain and thus a decision to suspend schooling for a period of time was taken.

And now we have advice that a Leaving CERT students should nonetheless attend school for three days a week.

And I am very, very concerned that there is now a level of stress and concern and confusion amongst parents, students and let it be said teachers, because the government has not set out in the plainest of terms the the advice that is got from Lafayette and from the chief medical officer, which told them that it was safe for these students not just to travel to school, but to congregate in classrooms for extended periods of time.

And I think that this is from the memory and merely this is from memory. Now, Stephen Donnelly was on the breakfast program this morning and he read out some of the advice that he got from the left. And basically it was that schools are not dangerous places, but movement is.

So therefore, you closed down schools and you eliminate a huge amount of movement around the country. And that, in theory, will bring down the rate, but therefore you can selectively keep some movement going much diminished because it's only the Leaving CERT cohort and that won't present a problem.

That's just from memory. I'm only talking off the top of my head, but that was the substance of what he said.

No, I heard what what the minister had to say, but the minister should have been upfront and should have indicated to people that the government neither sought nor received specific advice as regards leaving CERT students. And they need to seek and secure specific advice from the public health experts as regards to safety, not just of these students travelling to school. In terms of the mobility question that you raise. And I accept that that is the case was very clear that a million people are on the move would be disastrous when when we have such high levels of transmission.

But it's not just mobility, it's also congregation. And the question that I hear from teachers, from parents, from students is whether or not the safety of students and teachers congregated in classrooms for extended periods of time has actually been authorised. Cleared a. Based upon by the public health authorities and my understanding that the answer to that question is no.

Well, you may have heard normal phone had been pressed by Kieran Cuddihy on the hard shoulder yesterday on that very question. And we got no clear answer from the minister.

The question, though, of the Leaving CERT three days a week and the complexity then of those teachers who have to teach in class those students for three days of the week. However, each individual school might organize and they then have to return home and somehow teach the other classes who are not leaving cert classes, their geography, their history, their mathematics or whatever it is via Zoome.

You know, when when you get statements from government ministers, you expect some detail. We don't know whether every six year will be wearing a mask, for example, in school. We don't know.

I mean. Well, look, that brings me back to my point.

So my my my first alarm is and specifically on the issue of Leaving CERT students, is that that absence, it seems, of very clear, specific medical advice. And then secondly, you're right past and I had said this in my opening remarks, the lack of preparation. I mean, listening to some of the stakeholders yesterday when they were giving their first response, they indicated that their meetings with the minister were very brief. It was certainly not consultative.

They were just given the broad outline of what was going to happen. And, you know, that's very troubling. I accept that we're in very, very difficult a very difficult situation. And any decisions that will be taken are tough decisions. I know that. I think we all know that. But what I cannot accept is the level of disorder and lack of planning from government up to and including a lack of sustained comprehensive contact with the stakeholders sector by sector, whether it's education or otherwise, who are directly impacted by these very difficult measures.

That to me is not acceptable a year round.

Do you think? I mean, we'll be talking with Professor Luke O'Neill later on because they've done a study in the UK about how vaccinating certain cohorts of the population will impact on the death rate and so on. So we'll be teasing that out with him.

But do you think at this stage it might have been better for them just to say, look, leaving cert not happening at the beginning of June, it will happen at the beginning of July. So if you lose a month in school, it's not the end of the world. And also we will change the format a bit to give you more choices so that you're not you know, you won't be screwed by your lack of preparation totally. You will be able to prepare for the leaving cert.

Is that the kind of decisive talk we need now?

Well, I think the first decisive action has to be around guaranteeing the safety of students and of teachers and then by extension of their families.

I think also the the very clear action in respect of the child care needs of teachers and by the way, other frontline workers, if it is a thing that they are to return back to their places of work, that's another area where we've had fudge and indecision almost a year baboon's begin to form their own bubble.

Yeah, but I mean, is that is that works. Is that really? Well, the formation of a family bubble, I think is an established practice. Now, over the course of the last number of months, I think people have their heads around that concept. But is that really an acceptable response from the state and from government for for workers, for parents, for people on the front line at this stage, months and months into this er pandemic?

I don't think it is. I don't think it's good enough for the government to say, well, look, make your own arrangements, which is essentially the message that's coming from from government. So the issue of safety and preparedness and education and child care and beyond that and the government has has fallen very short of that.

On the issue of the Leaving CERT exam itself, again, I very much hope that we can have a traditional leaving service exam in the summer. But I know for that to happen, there has to be extensive contingency planning by government. And just so your listeners know, Pat, my colleague Don Akhalaia, our education spokesperson, has been asking the minister for months now since the summer to produce that contingency plan for the Leaving CERT, but also for the junior cert.

And I am very concerned at this stage that we've had no words of that. We've seen no progress on that. And that suggests to me that we have a strategy that is a bit of a wing and a prayer from government. And you cannot afford to adopt that kind of position when things are so serious and when things are so tough for people, bearing in mind the. Are people right across the land who haven't seen a day's work in almost a year, whose financial situation has been jeopardized, who who live now literally week to week and who are tearing their hair out?

Many of them at this stage. And at a minimum, society needs the sense of assurance that you have a government who can talk to people, who can actually engage with sectors, engage with people's concerns and who can plan.

And the evidence so far, and I'm sorry to say this, is that the government can't do that. They can make announcement announcements around new content, new measures, new public health interventions and new restrictions.

And they are necessary. And I accept those and I welcome that, that we now have word on those. But the lack of planning for the consequences of those is, to my mind, astonishing at this stage.

Well, you know, there is a thing called contingency planning, and that is if this scenario unfolds, we do a if the other scenario unfolds, we do B if a third scenario unfolds. We do see there does seem to be a lack of that. Everything seems to be a bit of a surprise at this text. This is the government doing a solo run. Again, the teachers can bring infection in to school. The students can bring infection into school at this period of time.

With the virus rampant, we need to reduce our contacts. And that includes every member of society. Keep the schools closed until the numbers come down.

Is that really what you are saying? You know what? Well, in the absence of any explanation, close them down.

Well, it will in the absence of of absolute assurances from the experts, the public health experts, that safety can be assured and from government that that will be resourced. In the absence of that, it's simply not safe. It's premature to say that tens of thousands of Leaving CERT students can go back safely into into the classroom. And I think that's the issue. You know, when when people look at the scenario that we're living through now, they know full well that we are in grave danger.

I mean, those that say that this virus is a hoax need to give themselves a shake. It's anything but. I wish to God it was a hoax. It is not.

And we have a huge job as a society to keep each other and to keep ourselves safe. But but for that to work, personal responsibility is one part of the equation. We all have to be mindful and thoughtful in our actions and our decisions. But the other side of the equation is the actions of government, you know, where they intervene and where they afford the kinds of supports that people needs, give clear advice and assure above and beyond all else that people are, in fact safe.

And I think that is the issue that has arisen now. I mean, on the issue of travel on to the island, let me say I very much welcome the fact that they have, however belatedly, introduced the necessity for checks and for a test, a negative test for traffic from Britain and from South Africa. But I scratch my head and I wonder why you limited to Britain and to South Africa. We've been saying again for months past that we need proper a proper system of not just an initial negative test, but then a second test when when the person has landed on our shores.

We need to have a proper system of checks and of quarantine for people when they arrive. And I have to tell you, it's fallen on deaf ears.

And this is the big issue, Mary Lou, of the border. Yes. And, you know, trying if you're talking about people bringing infection in, there was a time when Northern Ireland was worse than us. We are now worse than Northern Ireland, it appears in numerical terms. But the infections in Louth, in Monan and so on indicate that the border area is a particular problem.

What do you do about border areas where you know you're not going to be asking for a PCR test to drive from Donegal into Derry? No, no, you're not. But what we need and what we have, we have argued for consistency from the beginning of all of this is a coherent all island approach to all of these matters. And I think we would have met with more success had we had that very tight operation between Dublin and Belfast from the get go.

But that was not possible. And there's reasons for that. And I have to say, in fairness, all of that does not land at the feet of the government in Dublin. We've had a considerable issue with some of our unionist colleagues in finding consensus as to the safe and the correct way forward. But now at this time, where and it's not a case of, you know, pointing fingers from one jurisdiction to the other and say you're worse or we're better, that's not going to help anybody.

But the reality is now, right across the island, we are hitting record peaks. Our hospital systems, our health systems are under incredible stress and strain. Our people at the frontline are in the line of danger. And I think at this point, this is now the moment for all of us to step forward and to accept on issues like travel onto the island, we need to have an all island approach so that anybody entering through any port or airport onto the island of Ireland is here for essential travel.

And that person has the test and is tracked appropriately to ensure that we minimise that we minimise any importation of any strain or variant.

We saw the Unionists dismay at the notion of a border down the Irish Sea for trade. Watch them object to a border down the Irish Sea for public health reasons.

Anyway, I wanted to address something that we we had a go at starting yesterday.

He was criticising the notion that people would have to pay tax on their payments under EPDP or under the wage scheme, which arose before August of last year.

And the understanding was that this was always a taxable these were always taxable payments. And he, you know, objected to me characterizing him as he should know better. What do you say he did?

Yeah, well, he does know better. And he presented the facts as they were when when the puppy was introduced between March and August.

It was not on a statutory footing. It was not a taxable payment. It was an exceptional needs payment. And bear in mind this this was going to people who had lost their jobs, not because their jobs were unviable, but because this public health emergency here was like a train and because the state had to correctly intervene to support people's incomes in August, then the payment is put on a statutory footing. And like other welfare payments, they can be subject to tax.

So there's no issue there. The issue that was raised and is correct in raising, as is that to retrospectively or with hindsight, to apply a tax between March and August to a payment that was not taxable in law is simply wrong.

And and here's what the department said. And indeed, the minister said at the time, you might remember the outrage, people getting 350 euros a week when they had only been earning, say, 100 euros a week for working in a supermarket for half a day, that kind of thing. And they were told at the time before August that these would be taxable.

Well, look, you know, the department says that it was always understood because to do otherwise would be to discriminate against those who were on jobseeker's benefit or other such payments because they are taxable.

So, you know, some people get the other payment and it's not taxable. And then the people who are on long term unemployment or whatever, which is potentially taxable, well, they would be treated unfairly.

I think it's very disingenuous for anyone to try and take from the facts of the scenario that I've set out by trying to pitch people on job seekers against people on the pandemic unemployment payment. All of those people and their families are under significant financial pressure.

That you're right, is the point being you have to treat everyone the same in you know, in fairness, you can't be saying to some people who are getting an unemployment payment of some description, you know, allowing for partner's children and so on, that you've got to pay tax on that. But that's someone else who's on a puppy, doesn't have to pay tax on it.

Well, there are other issues of fairness riddled right across our society, and there are contradictions within our welfare code of that, there is no doubt. But just bear in mind, the pandemic unemployment payment specifically was an emergency, an emergency provision in a context for masses of people. They lost their jobs overnight because the state intervened and shut the economy down correctly, because we facing into this public health emergency and at the time, you're right. The department had plenty to say about this being taxable.

But the fact is in law, it was not taxable. That's the point that has been made. And I should ask, can I just say this? The issue of, you know, people who were due in two shifts are a shift in the local garage and all of a sudden they're on three hundred and fifty euro.

That was a design flaw in the original system, but that's on the government. That's not on everybody else. Lots of other people when when they lost their job and went on this payment, the fact is that their income got walloped and they were put under incredible strain.

An incredible scheme to revenue. Whether they're right or wrong in law at the scheme is not very onerous in the sense that it's payable over four years, doesn't start until 2022. A lot of water will be under the bridge before then. Hopefully a massive recall.

What can I just say? Can I just say the reality is there's no debate or question as to the fact that there is there's tax due from August onwards. But but this business of treating the pupae and retrospectively levying taxation is in marked contrast to other loopholes when they're closed down for the very wealthy and for the big corporates.

There's no question. I just make the point for the department.

They say it was the law they used was one simply for convenience to get it through quickly. But we'll debate that another day. Mary Lou McDonald, president of Sinn Fein, thank you very much for joining us.

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