Unvaccinated Invercargill children might be able to enter the council’s library and swimming pool from next week to attend school activities when Government’s legislation kicks in.
In December, the council introduced a policy requiring the public entering most of its facilities to be vaccinated for Covid-19.
It included the Splash Palace swimming pool and the public Library which were places used also for curricular and extracurricular school activities.
Last week, the council decided to review its vaccination mandate in its facilities in April after having received a staff report about the matter.
However, Education Minister Chris Hipkins stated last month that while he encouraged children who were eligible to be vaccinated, those who have not been vaccinated could not be deterred from accessing education and all of its activities as part of its Education Outside The Classroom legislation.
Yesterday at a performance, policy and partnerships committee meeting, council’s leisure and recreation group manager Steve Gibling gave a verbal update about the matter to councillors.
The council had received clarification from Sport NZ and the Department of Internal Affairs saying that it could be illegal for venues to continue requiring vaccination mandates for those children when they were engaged in school activities outside the classroom.
He said there was still some confusion and points to be clarified before the legislation takes effect.
"Essentially once the legislation is passed, council will not be able to apply its vaccine mandate policy to these children and is likely to occur around March 15 [passage of the legislation]."
Cr Rebecca Amundsen asked whether that meant those children could only be part of school activities or whether they could also be part of sports clubs.
Mr Gibling said answers to those questions were still unclear, but the advice he got was that children would have the exception for venues if they were associated with school activities.
"So they could attend, say for example, Splash Palace on a Friday evening to play water polo [for the school] and their vaccination exemption would apply. While on Saturday morning, going for a slide on the hydroslide, they would need to have the vaccine pass — at this point."
Cr Nigel Skelt highlighted he received a lot of feedback from parents who were confused about the Government's decision and what it meant.
While deputy mayor Nobby Clark asked if they could anticipate the review if the Government’s new legislation kicked in next week, as council had a lot of criticism from a small section of the community about their mandates passes.
Chairman Darren Ludlow said they could call an extraordinary meeting if those requirements were confirmed to deal with the matter.
