The Irish Hairdressing Council is the largest Hairdressing organisation in Ireland representing over 400 salons and 1800 individual members.
We do not support media reports from today calling for a move to phase 3.
The reasons for this is as follows:
- We follow the medical and scientific advice;
- An earlier return could and based on other countries quite possibly cause a spike;
- A more rapid return and spike will endanger the lives of our members and their clients;
- A move to Phase 3, will also impact on our Staff, with childcare needs ability to return to work as Creche and Childcare services will not be reopened to non-essential workers until Phase 4 of the current Roadmap.
- We need clients to be able to trust our ability to keep them as safe as possible while in the Salon and a campaign to move to an earlier phase based on economic reasons sends out entirely the wrong message;
- A move to Phase 3, based on economics and the desire by individual organisations to reopen, regardless of the established risks will result in a stop-start reopening in our industry. This will result in permanent business closures if there is a surge in cases, which most salons will not survive.
The Council supports a return to work in accordance with the Government roadmap to ensure our members and their customers are kept safe. We will continue to push for safe guidelines for reopening with the Government and the Health & Safety Authority to ensure that when we do return, it will be a permanent return to work.
A move to phase 3 is reckless, ill-thought-out, shortsighted and driven by people with no medical qualifications to make these decisions in our
——ENDS——
For enquiries:
Sean Taaffe – hairdressingcouncilofireland@gmail.com
