THE Stormont Executive’s delayed lockdown recovery plan was announced on Tuesday afternoon with deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill describing it as “cautious and hopeful” while First Minister Arlene Foster branded it “not perfect”. It’s a plan that has people raising questions without infuriating anyone, yet at the same time has people hoping for better times ahead without jumping for joy,
And that’s possibly as much as can be expected from a plan drawn up without the information needed to put it together. Its five stages are as nebulous as the process for getting from one to the next. The text is littered with contingencies: what ifs, but onlys and maybes, and the subsequent utterances of the First and deputy First Minister were similarly cautious.
While Mrs Foster on Tuesday expressed the hope that that by March 16 the Executive will be able to give a clear picture in relation to the return to school, that’s largely a meaningless sentence most likely concocted to cover up the party’s failure to secure the hard and fast date that it’s been demanding.
If any of this reads like a criticism, it is not. In fact, there’s been a victory of sorts for common sense because the plan has pulled up short of laying down dates in the manner of the Boris Johnson adminstration, which is throwing the English people populist titbits – and the DUP has shown itself to be still inexplicably in thrall to this Tory government despite its repeated willingness to do exactly the opposite of what the DUP wants it to do.
It is particularly to be welcomed that no date has been set for the reopening of schools – the timescale in the plan is some time after Easter (which this year falls on April 4) and then only if the transmission rate is at a level that allows it.
While Mrs Foster on Tuesday expressed the hope that that by March 16 the Executive will be able to give a clear picture in relation to the return to school, that’s largely a meaningless sentence most likely concocted to cover up the party’s failure to secure the hard and fast date that it’s been demanding.
The failure of the DUP to claim a date for the reopening of schools after loudly and brashly fracturing a fragile consensus on the most recent Executive agreement on lockdown is another vivid illustration of that party’s addiction to stunts and its increasing unreliability as a partner in government.
The parties have declared unanimously that they will work to ensure that this is the final lockdown – another extraordinarily woolly statement, but the plain truth is that vanilla language is all that the Executive can give at the minute while it implements what is is a necessarily cautious, not to say confusing, plan.
The big complicating factor, of course, is the sheer unpredictability of the new variant Manaus virus, which demands extreme caution given the relative lack of knowledge we have about its infectiousness and – crucially – on how the current vaccines are going to be able to deal with it.
What we’re left with, at the end of the day, is continuing uncertainty, but with a vague promise of imminent relief. What the Executive has given us is not so much a meaningful plan as a prayer.
And it would make things a lot better if we could all resolve for once to pray together.
