Nphet committee on vulnerable people disbanded

Louise O'Reilly: 'The Minister for Health should provide an explanation as to why these groups have effectively been disbanded.'
 

Committees convened to deal with the issues of vulnerable citizens and behavioural changes among the population during Covid-19 were disbanded in the summer and no longer report to the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet).

The Behavioural Change and Vulnerable People subgroups of Nphet were first convened in March and met roughly every week thereafter.

Both were disbanded in July, in the aftermath of the initial national lockdown, having agreed internally that they had matched their terms of reference.

Neither has reported to Nphet despite the country going into a renewed Level Five lockdown for six weeks last month, per a series of parliamentary question replies to Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly.

It was agreed the Behavioural Change group, upon its dissolution, could reconstitute on “an advisory basis”. Having reformulated as the Covid-19 Communications and Behaviour Advisory Group, it no longer has any relationship to Nphet, and instead reports its impressions of available data to the Department of Health fortnightly.

“I don’t know whether that circuit completes or not”, one member of the group said when asked whether or not Nphet still had sight of its research. “We did about seven studies on behaviour, but they were done pre-July,” they said.

The Vulnerable Persons Group meanwhile, whose former terms of reference included the identification of categories of vulnerable people and the verification that measures to assist them were being correctly implemented, was replaced by a “cross-government mechanism to co-ordinate sustained support for those who are vulnerable”.

It’s unclear why the new groupings do not report to Nphet, which has primary responsibility for advising the Government on public health policy. 

The Department of Health acknowledged that the groupings are no longer sub-committees of NPHET. However, a spokesperson declined to clarify the reasons for that distinction.

Ms O’Reilly described the disbandment of the groups and the fact they no longer report to Nphet as being “very worrying”.

“The Minister for Health should provide an explanation as to why these groups have effectively been disbanded,” she said.