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AS VACCINES START being rolled out to the general population, and as cases continue to fall, though not as fast as hoped, attention is quickly turning to what life might look like when things ‘return to normal’.
Will we go back to commuting to cities and working in our offices? Will we be as keen to squeeze into nightclubs like sardines on a Saturday night, and will we be able to travel abroad to see our family and friends, or just to have a holiday?
It is this final question that remains very much up in the air. Covid-19 is going to be with us for a long time to come.
While Ireland will vaccinate the vast majority of its adults in 2021, there will be many countries, upwards of 100 I suspect, that will be a year or two behind us. How will that affect travel? What will airlines and other governments do?
That’s why a debate has started in Europe, as well as here in Ireland, about Covid Vaccine Certificates. This is an important debate. It needs to be mature yet also fast.
No time to waste
Outside of a pandemic, it’s a debate that would rightly take place over a period of years. Sadly, we simply don’t have the luxury of time for a deep, ideological debate.
Other countries are moving ahead quite quickly. Even some of our EU colleagues are formulating their own schemes and working out how they will operate globally.
My reason for supporting an internationally recognisable, interoperable vaccine certificate is to allow for travel and to avoid the need to quarantine upon arrival into another country.
My support has nothing to do with restricting the rights of Irish people to go about their business in Ireland. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties has rightly raised the red flag about such a certificate being used to restrict access to services or facilities in Ireland. It cannot and should not be used to force anyone to get vaccinated if they chose not to.
Late last year, Qantas, the Australian airline, announced that only vaccinated people would be able to book seats on their planes. That leaves us with a dilemma. If Irish people want to fly to Australia using that airline then they need a way of proving they have been vaccinated.
Quarantine vs vaccinations
Crucially some countries may force people to either quarantine in a hotel for 14 days, at their own cost, or prove they have been vaccinated. People will have a choice to make; just as people must have a choice about whether they take the vaccine or not.
While many in Ireland like to think we can set our own rules; we can’t in all cases. Businesses and other countries will have to take decisions in the best interest of their business or their citizens, just as Ireland and Irish businesses must do, and will enforce these rules on everyone wanting to work with them or visit. We, therefore, need to decide if, and how, we react.
There are, however, a number of guiding principles that must be applied across the EU when it comes to Vaccine Certificates:
1. Vaccination certification should not lead to an indirect vaccination obligation;
2. All data should be protected, in line with the EU rules on data protection and especially the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679;
3. National centralised vaccination databases should not be shared;
4. All EU airports, railway and bus stations as well as ports should apply common criteria and procedures for the recognition of vaccination certificates and tests results.
Now is not the time for sticking our heads in the sand and hoping someone else will make this decision for us.
The Government, through the Department of Justice, must start work on developing a system, ideally in coordination with our European neighbours that is safe, non-discriminatory and globally recognised.
Billy Kelleher, Fianna Fáil, is an MEP for Ireland South.
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These projects are really good for kids. And teachers like that are worth their weight in gold.
@Marg murphy,
They’re not kids, they’re 18-22 year olds, and this looks like something you would see in the jungle.
Talk about dumbing down.
@eamon go back to bed
@Donnacha Bhoicaire,
You’re easily impressed, no wonder Ireland’s colleges have such low rankings.
GMIT is far behind MIT.
@eamonn. I should have read beyond the first line the article where I read “schoolchild”. I thought it was a primary school project.
@Marg murphy,
Yes, if it was young children who built it, then it would be impressive.
Eamon Mac I really feel sorry for you and your negative life. It’s very sad for you
You don’t really seem like someone people would like.
Tis a little on the exposed side for a winter classroom.
Good for cider parties in the summer though.
Good thinking.
Robinson Crusoe would be proud of you.. !!
You can’t be doom and gloom all the time, sometimes a bit of been positive can lift you up.
Agreed
Housing problem solved, no morgage.
Well you can’t beat there optimism about the weather!
Fantastic to see how rapidly Mayo civilisation is advancing.
This is simply awesome. Yes it’s not brick and mortar boring thinking that would leave a huge carbon footprint. It’s out of the box thinking that encourages more out of the box thinking. I remember looking out glass windows of lecture rooms on a nice sunny day wishing for something like this. The fact that brick and mortar buildings are assumed to be a “continuous improvement ” from such structures as this makes one think about construction methods and it’s success could probably be measured by the pride that all involved have when they look at it. Large scale team building exercise with a functional result that can be used by many. Not all will see but not all have creative ability and less have creative ability with follow through. Congratulations to you all.
Thank you for your comments Croistoir. The project is part of an ongoing Green Campus initiative under Local Agenda 21 funding. The students explored the principles of place based education whilst constructing the classroom. The module that students were taking which this project is part of was sustainable environmental management. If you require any further information please contact me via the Facebook page.
Aodan
There’s an awful lot of ar$eholery in this thread.
See if you can spot who I’m on about.
I’ll post the answer in a short while. :-)
Eamon MacGowan?
Too easy
Well at least it’s air -conditioned!
Great to be able to do this without planning permission, wheelchair access, fire restrictions etc……..
It’s part of an environmental sustainability management module, exploring the principles of placed based education. It for the entire community not just the college but for local national schools and youth organisations.
Amazing health & safety has not shut it down !
They’ve been watching too much Bear Grylls.
I hope they wont be given the job of designing social housing.We might freeze to death!
Yeah wow fair play, threw it together as a wee little project!
When the sad fact remains that millions of children around the world do actually have their whole schooling in such lacking facilities due to poverty.
This is so Irish, any old halfhearted effort will do.
Shure it’s grand!
Relax eamon I’m sure it was meant as an exercise to get some youngsters out of a lecture hall and thinking outside the box, no one, well except Gerard, was suggesting this was the solution to all the worlds ills
Get some help Eamon. You appear to have a major malfunction. Well don’t gmit
Racist comments, to me, are suggestive of a certain tardiness with regard to the evolutionary process.
It doesn’t look a bit impressive to me.
A bit naff.
Students should be out protesting and throwing stones at the police.
Not wasting their time building such ridiculous childish tree houses.
P.S
I built a better tree-house than that when I was 9 years old.
Erm, can I ask is it hurricane proof?
Are you thinking of teaching a class there during one of our frequent hurricanes?
I could be cynical and point out how hedge schools came into my mind when I first saw this article. The country was under an administration that cared little for the common people at that point. Some things don’t change
have your say