A NURSING leader has warned the closure of schools in Northern Ireland will have a "disastrous" impact on the NHS due to lack of childcare for frontline staff.
Pat Cullen, who heads up the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) revealed she has received distressed calls from members who are considering leaving their jobs during the pandemic as they have "no-one to look after their young families".
Speaking publicly for the first time on the schools issue, the union chief said 54 per cent of the north's nursing workforce have school age children - and "a significant percentage of those are single parents".
The majority of the profession are women.
"Unfortunately, some of the options that have been put to nurses by their employer is unpaid leave or being told to consider a career break. Indeed, some are saying they may need to resign from their posts," she said.
"At the same time, they have fear and guilt about leaving their colleagues with a further depleted workforce and not being able to get to work when they know the health service needs them for every hour they can possibly give. That's the challenge - how do they balance that."
With more than 2,800 unfilled nursing jobs and soaring levels of staff self-isolating due to coronavirus, Ms Cullen said she "absolutely fears for the health service" if a decision is taken by Stormont to shut down schools in the grip of a second wave.
She said the measure should only be taken as a "very last resort".
The union chief was responding to comments made by Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride, who said it will "not be possible to keep R below 1" with both a return to schools and hospitality re-opening when the circuit breaker ends in less than a fortnight.
Dr McBride's stark message was delivered in a radio interview with Cool FM on Friday, 24 hours before First Minister Arlene Foster insisted that current restrictions will be lifted "as planned".
Sources say his comments have created serious tensions among the Stormont executive, with Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill tweeting at the weekend that any easing is to be "reviewed".
The development comes as the many of the north's main hospitals reach capacity due to soaring levels of Covid related admissions.
Dozens of operations, including cancer surgery and organ transplants, have also been cancelled with staff redeployed to coronavirus wards.
Yesterday, there were 379 Covid patients being treated in hospitals, with 52 in intensive care.
Ms Cullen called on the Executive to make urgent provision for childcare in the event of a shut down.
"Almost 64 per cent of the workforce are band 5 nurses, earning around £25k a year," she said.
She added: "If we cannot keep schools going, well then we absolutely fear for the health service. How will the health service operate given the level of nursing vacancies, the numbers of self-isolations and the number of nurses with Covid infections? And now we are going to say to them, we cannot accommodate you to look after your children.
"Losing more nursing staff out of the system at this point would be a disaster."
Meanwhile, as thousands of pupils returned to classrooms yesterday after an extended mid-term break to curb the spread of the virus, schools were told to hold PE classes outside with no more than 15 children.
The guidance from the Department of Health comes two weeks after the executive placed restrictions on sport and training below elite level.
