Political year in review: Weathering the Covid storm
The political year was dominated by all things Covid-19; above: the queue outside the vaccination centre at City Hall, Cork, earlier this month. Picture: Denis Minihane
The year got off to an inauspicious start when Education Minister Norma Foley tried and failed not once but twice to re-open the schools after Christmas.
Teacher unions cited concerns about the safety of such a move amid high levels of Covid-19 transmission in the community following the arrival of the Kent variant strain into the country.
After the second attempt failed, Foley said claims by a teachers’ union that it did not instruct its members to stay out of schools are “incredibly disingenuous”.
She made the statement after John Boyle, general secretary of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO), said his union “most certainly didn’t” instruct its members not to go back to schools.
Talks between the Department of Education and unions over the resumption of classes for children with special education needs collapsed. Children did not return to the classroom until March.
It’s not often that the European Commission holds its hands up and says it made a mistake.
However, in late January the Commission did just that when it apologised for causing a diplomatic row on the island of Ireland which saw a rare show of political unity across Dublin, London, and Belfast.
The issues began when the EU announced it would implement a “vaccine export transparency mechanism″ until the end of March to control vaccine shipments to non-EU countries.
The EU felt that Astrazeneca had not been making good on its contractual obligations around delivery of vaccines to the bloc and wanted to implement a “transparency and licencing mechanism for exports”, which it denied was an export ban.
What followed was five hours of panic, controversy, and bemusement as reports emerged that the EU would instead trigger Article 16 of the UK’s Withdrawal Agreement to stop vaccines being exported to the UK through Northern Ireland.
Then-first minister Arlene Foster said the move was despicable as governments and the media scramble to find out what is happening.
Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney tweeted that he was aware of what’s happening as Downing Street lays down a challenge to Brussels.
By 10.45pm, however, it was all over as the EU said in a statement that: “The Commission is not triggering the safeguard clause.”
EU vice president Maroš Šefčovič later told an Oireachtas Committee that the move was a mistake made under “immense pressure”.
In early 2021, with Ireland in lockdown after an explosion of Covid-19 cases, the Government was under pressure to ensure that no additional variants of the virus could enter the country.
With a soft border to the UK on the island, many argued that simply wasn’t possible, but what was deemed doable was a system of mandatory hotel quarantine.
However, the system was not cheap, coming in at €1,875 which "includes overnight accommodation for 12 nights, breakfast, lunch and dinner".
The rate also includes transfer from airport/port to hotel and security. You were also provided with two tests for Covid-19, "free of charge".
It is understood that during an allotted smoke break, the three walked from the Crowne Plaza hotel in Santry.
Two were later returned to the facility, but the problem would continue, with at least 75 people absconding.
Of the 75 people who left mandatory quarantine, just 24 returned to their accommodation "voluntarily" after gardaí intervened.
Legislation was passed in November to allow for its reintroduction if necessary.
In the bleak midwinter of last January and February, with the schools closed and level-5 lockdown conditions prevailing, a glimmer of hope was given by way of the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines.
Overnight, many of us became armchair experts in virology and being able to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and the Johnson and Johnson (Jansen) jabs.
Repeatedly described as the silver bullet, the easing of restrictions throughout the second quarter of the year was predicated on more and more people getting vaccinated.
After a sluggish start put down to supply issues, our health officials turned what had been a negative story into one of the big success stories of 2021.
By August, we had over 90% jabbed and the end appeared in sight.
But as we know, there was a sting in the tail in the form of Omicron. We end the year with mass vaccination centres operating at capacity and long queues.
Few matters stir passions in Irish politics more than roads.
In recent decades, from the M3 and Tara, to the widening of the Glen of the Downs in Wicklow, from the M20 to the ongoing Busconnects row in Dublin, we love a good barney over a road.
In February, a major inter-government dispute kicked off between Fianna Fáil and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan over his failure to progress the proposed link road between Coonagh and Knockalisheen at Moyross, Limerick.
The row has already escalated into a sharp war of words and a threat from Fianna Fáil TDs that they could not be expected to back Green proposals in the Programme for Government if this project, which they support, was not progressed.
In his typically colourful manner, saying that €17m of taxpayer’s money has already been spent on this project, O’Dea said he was being made to look like a eunuch by Ryan’s refusal to budge on the matter.
O’Dea was “incensed” by the delays and told the meeting that Ryan had said the country “already has enough roads”.
Quoting Hollywood star Clint Eastwood, O’Dea said of Ryan: “Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining,” to widespread humour.
The details of O’Dea’s comments were reported in the which he later confirmed on RTÉ’s . Ryan relented a short while later and O’Dea got his road.
There was some mild surprise when former Housing Minister and the Dáil’s resident posh boy Eoghan Murphy announced he was quitting politics.
Demoted from Cabinet, the campaign manager for Leo Varadkar’s leadership campaign found it hard to adjust to his reduced status and in April he threw in the towel.
Murphy wrote to the Ceann Comhairle to confirm his resignation. Resigning to pursue a career in international development, Murphy said it was “a personal decision” to stand down.
Attention swiftly shifted to the resulting by-election and the position of Kate O’Connell, the ex-TD who lost out to Murphy in the 2020 General Election.
While it was seen she was the ideal candidate to stand for Fine Gael, others in Fine Gael saw it differently.
In announcing her decision not to stand, O’Connell said there is a faction in the party which did not want her to run.
She had made it known to the party that she was interested in being a candidate but Fine Gael had insisted on following a process that would have made it “impossible” for her to win at convention.
She also said there were elements in the party locally who were determined that she be ousted from Fine Gael.
“There has been a faction, I would feel, within the party since the leadership campaign which I thought had long gone out with the tide, who have long planned the exit of myself,” she told broadcaster Claire Byrne.
She said somebody had brought a sod of turf to a local event and that there was also a plan to put a sign outside her family pharmacy stating “this way to the M50”, signalling to her she should go home to her native Co Westmeath.
The Comptroller and Auditor General said the HSE had written off €375m worth of PPE bought since the start of the pandemic, the Dáil heard in September.
Not €3.75m, or €37.5m, but €375m. Gone in a puff of smoke.
The political system tore itself asunder over the €15,000-a-year job to Katherine Zappone, but barely an eye was batted when the PPE issue emerged.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly made clear no inquiry was likely. Worse, he stood up in the Dáil and sought to defend the situation.
“The HSE did what we asked it to do,” he said. “I urge us all to remember that we in the Oireachtas demanded immediate action from the HSE. It took that action.”
In February, when the Dáil was still sitting in the cavernous Convention Centre, an extraordinary attack was launched on the wealth of Kerry TD Danny and Michael Healy-Rae.
Labour TD Duncan Smith accused them of “driving their Mercedes into their big plant hire shops, walking past all of their machinery, worth hundreds of thousands, to count all their money”.
Smith was speaking on a Labour motion about the need for a more aggressive anti-Covid strategy, and was irked by criticism of his party by the Kerry pair.
“What really got me in this debate today were the contributions from the Healy-Raes — both of them,” Mr Smith said.
“I am absolutely disgusted because it hit me personally. They said we did not understand working people and did not understand a carpenter coming to the house to fix a job.
“I am the son of a carpenter,” he said sharply. “I am not the son of Fianna Fáil privilege and millions and millions of euro.
"I remember, as a kid in the 1980s, having to take any work going, hanging doors in Finglas, just to put a roof over our heads and food on the table.
"I am not going to be lectured on understanding workers. I do not have to put on a political costume and a caricature to pretend I am working class, like some. They do."
Not a bad way to announce your arrival on the national stage.
Despite Fine Gael’s James Geoghegan being the first in the field for the Dublin Bay South by-election, he was not to be victorious.
Instead, a party with less than 5% support in opinion polls which has remained toxic since its time in government was able to win the day.
Having toiled in the Seanad for many years and having tried and failed in several elections in several constituencies, Ivana Bacik emerged victorious, giving her beleaguered party and leader Alan Kelly a much-needed boost.
Surprising many by topping the poll, it was clear that it was brand Ivana rather than brand Labour that swung it as voters in the Dail’s most barrister-laden constituency turned away from Geoghegan and flocked to her.
A mid-race opinion poll that put Bacik in the mix was decisive in marking her out as the only viable challenger to Geoghegan and thus ended the challenge of Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan.
It was a day of disaster for Fianna Fáil’s Deirdre Conroy who failed so spectacularly, winning just 4.7% of the first preference votes.
The poll heaped immediate pressure on Taoiseach Micheál Martin and sparked renewed mutterings as to his position as leader. Such mutterings faded quickly as did any hint of a heave against him.
Conroy’s campaign manager Jim O’Callaghan, seen by many as the heir apparent to Martin, was left with his reputation somewhat tarnished.
It was the final Cabinet meeting before the summer break that a major bombshell emerged which caused no end of trouble for the Government.
The at lunchtime on Tuesday, July 27, announced that the Cabinet had approved the name of former minister Katherine Zappone to become a special envoy for freedom of expression.
We then reported that Taoiseach Micheál Martin was left "blindsided" by Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney over the proposal to make Zappone a government envoy.
Coveney apologised for the failure to flag Zappone’s name but his error would cost the Government considerably for many weeks.
Zappone was appointed to the paid position of the Government’s special envoy on freedom of opinion and expression without any tendering process or competition. Martin was left “not best pleased” at the proposal to nominate Zappone.
The appointment row became a saga when it emerged Zappone had hosted an event at the Merrion Hotel in the days before her appointment was confirmed, at which many leading politicians were in attendance.
Zappone under pressure decided not to accept the role on foot of the controversy but largely avoided commenting on the affair.
But there was also recrimination as to how the information was leaked to the when the Cabinet meeting was still ongoing.
reported that the prime suspect rang a government colleague to discuss how terrible the situation was and how it should never have happened.
The colleague, already nursing suspicions, agreed wholeheartedly, even going so far as to say he had just let fly on local radio — something along the lines of “disgrace, should be reversed, the leadership should be ashamed”.
Within minutes of that call ending, the colleague’s phone rang and a journalist’s number came up; he didn’t answer.
It was immediately followed up by a text from the journalist, saying one of the guys in the office had just heard him on the radio and could he clarify what he said?
And here’s the sting: The TD was never on the radio. It was a set-up. It was all getting very strange.
In July, the revealed that the Government was set to abandon its long-held 12.5% corporation tax rate later in the year.
Several senior government sources said that while no formal government decision has yet been made, there was a strong expectation that our major tax incentive for large multi-national firms was set to be relinquished as part of a new OECD tax agreement in October.
Earlier that month, the G7 and OECD countries reached agreement but not unanimous consensus on the key aspects of a global tax deal which seeks to introduce a minimum rate of 15%.
Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe had so far only signalled a willingness to discuss the impact of a new global minimum rate of 15%, but behind the scenes there was a “clear direction of travel”.
Sure enough, come October, Donohoe confirmed that Ireland was ready to sign up to a proposed global agreement for a minimum tax on companies.
International press said the climbdown removed one hurdle to an unprecedented deal that would reshape the landscape for multinationals.
After the summer break, the Government was desperate to put the controversy to bed.
But Coveney again mis-stepped and re-ignited the controversy. Coveney said he had deleted text messages he exchanged with the Tánaiste from his phone before Freedom of Information requests were submitted by journalists.
A series of requests seeking copies of correspondence between the pair were made by reporters and politicians after the appointment of Katherine Zappone to a UN role was agreed by Cabinet in July.
The Foreign Affairs Minister was quizzed by an Oireachtas committee over the now deleted exchange between himself and Leo Varadkar.
He wrote to the Foreign Affairs Committee rejecting strongly claims he misled members in evidence given by him earlier this week in relation to the appointment process for Katherine Zappone as a UN special envoy.
He brought phone hacking into the public domain when explaining why he regularly deleted text messages, insisting that he brought up the hacking issue because some people were wrongly suggesting he was attempting to hide his text conversations with the Tánaiste about the Zappone process.
Ultimately, a new process for appointing such envoys was approved by the Cabinet in December but it was an appalling calamity of the Government’s own making.
More than once during the year, Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s position as leader came into focus.
A succession of poor opinion polls made the troops jumpy and several TDs, led by a discontented Barry Cowen, said it would be preferable if he stood down at the time of the changeover of the Taoiseach’s office next December.
After the by-election disaster in Dublin Bay South, such calls ramped up.
It all got too much for one and in September Sligo TD Marc MacSharry felt he couldn’t back the government in a motion of confidence in Simon Coveney over the Zappone affair and resigned the whip.
He had a good lash at the Taoiseach on his way out the door, as he had been doing at successive parliamentary party meetings.
“Sadly, as has been the practice over the course of the last year, the party voting intentions have once again been dictated by Government without debate and without input from Fianna Fáil elected parliamentary members,” he said.
PP meetings are much quieter these days, sadly.
In the midst of a global pandemic, with a vaccine rollout in full swing, the last thing that the country needed was any impact to the health service.
Unfortunately, that’s what emerged in mid-May as the HSE announced it had been forced to shut down all of its IT systems at a local and national level in response to a "significant and serious" cyber attack.
The attack took down the Covid test and tracing system for a day, but the vaccination programme continued apace as politicians and civil servants said that the ransomware attack would not be solved by paying money to the criminals responsible.
An external report into the devastating cyberattack shows the Russian-based Conti crime gang sent a malicious Excel file attached to a phishing email to a user at an ordinary patient workstation.
Clicking on the file allowed the gang full access to the system, ultimately leading to “accounts with high levels of privileges”.
Worryingly however the report states “several detections” of the gang’s activity were made during this eight-week period but they were not investigated.
It states the gang were able to move with “relative ease” through the system using “well-known and simple attack techniques”.
There’s little question that the live entertainment and hospitality sectors have been the most impacted part of the economy.
Entering the summer, with vaccination numbers increasing and case numbers a tenth of where they are now, the sector was pushing for a plan. Not a date for reopening, but a plan for when that might happen.
Into August, the issue split the Government as Arts Minister Catherine Martin voiced "disappointment" that her plan to reopen the sector was not approved by the Cabinet's Covid sub-committee.
The minister asked to be included in the upcoming meetings of the power Cabinet Covid sub-committee as the live events sector continued to remain shuttered after 17 months, with thousands of jobs at risk.
At a much-hyped virtual meeting with more than 20 representatives from the sector, the minister was unable to supply the reopening date for live entertainment, nor to provide a detailed roadmap to that end.
Martin told the meeting’s attendees that she had written to the three government parties’ leaders two weeks ago to express “her deep concern for the industry and unhappiness with (the) pace of reopening” and the “disparity” between how sports and music events have been treated.
That comment was seen by some Cabinet colleagues as undermining both the Government and her own position, with some questioning whether the proposal brought to Cabinet would have been workable.
As the Government looked for a way to safely reopen indoor dining, the EU’s Digital Covid Certificate proved to be the way forward.
Requiring proof of vaccination would not only be safer, it would lead to a “vaccine bonus” which would encourage uptake, the Government reasoned.
However, the Delta wave of Covid pushed back a July 5 reopening date and senior ministers vented fury at being “blindsided” by bleak projections from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet), which recommended that access to indoor dining should “only be permitted for those who have been fully protected by vaccination or who have had Covid-19 infection in the previous nine months”.
After a “messy and depressing” Cabinet meeting Taoiseach Micheál Martin, defending the delay, said the postponement of indoor hospitality to some point after July 19 was done to avoid “another potential Covid tragedy”, while Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said the country could be facing large numbers of deaths if the virus spread unchecked.
In the end, faced with dire warnings from Nphet, the Government held fire for nearly a month, reopening indoor hospitality on July 26. For many pubs it was the first time they had opened since March 2020.
But while the initial worry had been a lack of buy-in from the public and the industry, the system was widely adopted by the industry and the public, despite initial delays in receiving them.
While some in Government had been resistant to the passes, they are very much part of life for many now, with Minister of State Ossian Smyth saying that while the EU's Digital Covid Cert scheme is due to expire at the end of June 2022, he expects it will be required beyond that.
The Government found itself on the back foot this year after a previous redress scheme for homeowners in Donegal and elsewhere dealing with crumbling homes was deemed to be insufficient.
Homes affected by Mica needed 100% redress, those affected demanded and several leading government TDs including Dara Calleary and Joe McHugh made noises about resigning from government if a solution was not found.
The Government conceded more was needed and Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien set about putting in place an enhanced scheme.
That new scheme, worth €2.2bn, was announced in November but within hours was deemed as “insufficient” to meet the cost of rebuilding, a campaign group believes.
The new government scheme would cover up to €138 per square foot for rebuilding homes affected by mica, with a total cap of €420,000.
In theory, the new scheme raises the redress from 90% to 100%, but the Mica Action Group says it still falls short of adequately covering the costs incurred by homeowners.
A backbench revolt was quickly eased by a promise that a review of the rates being paid to homeowners will take place in February. But this is far from over.
All year long, the threat of the triggering of Article 16 of the UK Withdrawal Agreement has hung over the process like a Sword of Damocles.
If it wasn’t the EU almost triggering it in a row over vaccines, it was the whole thing nearly coming crashing down because of sausages.
In the end, that one was staved off by the extension of the Northern Ireland Protocol grace periods allowing a range of products to continue being shipped across the Irish Sea.
But into November, the UK continued with threats to suspend the agreement, citing the use of the European Court of Justice.
All month, the UK threatened to pull out of the agreement it itself had signed less than a year ago unless changes were made, prompting questions in Dublin and Brussels about whether the EU was dealing with an honest broker in Boris Johnson.
The month was dogged with speculation that the UK would hit the pause button on the agreement, even as the EU announced proposed laws to assist the free flow of medicines from Great Britain into Northern Ireland.
In a late November call, however, Mr Johnson made the most direct threat yet from Downing Street, when he left Mr Martin in no doubt as to his willingness to press the pause button on the protocol.
Matters at home for Mr Johnson, however, overtook proceedings following the resignation of Brexit minister David Frost in December.
Mr Frost resigned with “immediate effect” on December 19, having agreed to stay in the role until January, citing “the current direction of travel” of the Government, as well as fears over “coercive” Covid measures and the wish for the UK to become a “lightly regulated, low-tax” economy.
Comparing Covid to Nazis “the mark of the beast” is how Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath described the use of vaccine passes for hospitality and it was, somehow, not one of the more outlandish comparisons he used in 2021.
Speaking to the media in front of Leinster House in July, Mr McGrath said: "Is that where we've come to now, back to 1933 in Germany, we'll be all tagged in yellow with the mark of the beast on us, is that where we're going?
"I'm surprised at ye."
When challenged on whether such a comparison to the Holocaust was appropriate, McGrath said: "If you study history and I'm not a historian, you can see what happened in Germany.
"There is huge correlations, it's exactly the same if you want to study it, exactly the same, restriction of movements, couldn't go where they wanted to go, treated like.”
Mr McGrath had previously compared taxi men not being able to protest during the pandemic to "Nazi Hitler times" while speaking in the Dáil.
In October, he compared Covid powers to apartheid, sparking criticism from opposition and Government TDs.
"It's an apartheid what's going on and we're objecting to that,” Mr McGrath said.
His comparison earned a swift rebuke from the Auschwitz Museum, which tweeted: “Instrumentalization of the tragedy of all people who between 1933-45 suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the hateful totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.”
Voters should be told of Sinn Féin's Abú system by "means of canvassing and electioneering literature", the Data Protection Commissioner found last week.
The Commissioner undertook an audit of data protection by political parties earlier this year after the Sinn Féin database came to light in reports in the Irish Independent.
The audit, published in December, finds that Sinn Féin is "the only political party in Ireland that maintains a database that encompasses electors'/voters' data from all parties across that State".
"The audit of Sinn Féin considered in detail the matter of the legal basis for the Abú database and found it was not necessary to make recommendations in that regard.
"However, one of the main data protection concerns that arose related to transparency and a recommendation was made in particular with regard to drawing attention to the existence of the Abú database by means of canvassing and electioneering literature."
The term “gamechanger” has been thrown around with regards to the pandemic, but usually in relation to vaccines or medication.
Unfortunately, late November saw the arrival of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, which has been labelled a gamechanger on the opposite end of the spectrum.
While there are hopes that the variant is less severe than its Delta predecessor, it has proven to be more transmissible and there are fears that it can escape vaccines.
First found in Ireland on December 1, the variant is now dominant in those coming down with the virus here and the threat that it could lead to mass hospitalisations — even if less severe, the higher case numbers, the higher the number that translate to hospitalisations — has led to Ireland taking pre-emptive action.
New restrictions announced on December 17 were done with last Christmas in mind, the Taoiseach said.
Micheál Martin said that while there are doubts over Omicron's severity, the experience of last Christmas shows we cannot "let it rip and hope for the best".
With many looking to South Africa for comfort about the variant’s danger — it has seen no major uptick in those in hospital, despite a major rise in cases — closer to home the news is less optimistic.
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