Remember when we emerged en masse from behind our front doors, flung open our windows, and stationed ourselves on our balconies and at our garden gates to applaud the heroism of frontline workers during the Covid-19 pandemic. While most of us were cocooning or confined within walking distance from home, nurses, doctors, paramedics, hospital porters and caterers were risking contagion in the bravest demonstration of solidarity ever witnessed in this State.

During the first month of the lockdown, at 8pm on Friday, March 27th, 2020, we streamed forth to show them our gratitude. In Dáil Éireann, the Ceann Comhairle interrupted a debate on the Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Bill for TDs to join in the gesture of “thanks and respect to the workers on the front line”. Politicians rose from their seats and clapped till their hands were raw.

Now, just two years since the Government began lifting the restrictions, that respect has vanished. What has replaced it smacks of contempt. Urgent care hospital workers are expected to perform the daily high wire act of balancing their duty to do no harm in overcrowded conditions reminiscent of war movies. That is not the worst of it though. To add insult to injury, the Government has terminated a special sick pay scheme for the tiny proportion of staff who have developed long Covid and who are so incapacitated that they can no longer work.

An intensive care nurse identified as Siobhán told her story on RTÉ radio last month, on the weekend the scheme was stopped. She recalled that, in late February 2020 – when Ireland had yet to enter lockdown – she was looking after “the first patient” with........

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