Daniel McConnell: Inquiry into the handling of the pandemic can’t pull its punches

More than €32bn in Covid-19 spending, all borrowed money, has to be paid back by taxpayers over time. The huge waste in buying personal protective equipment, circa €375m, is one of many issues that need to be examined. Picture: Sam Boal / RollingNews.ie

THOSE of us who covered the 2015 Banking Inquiry are still somewhat scarred by the absolute farce it turned out to be.

After several years of people calling for an examination as to how Ireland fell off the financial cliff in 2008, the inquiry was finally established but was fatally wounded before it began.

A combination of weak legislation, a Supreme Court judgment, and an overly zealous legalistic approach meant the inquiry could not blame any individual for what happened.

It meant the findings of the Banking Inquiry were rendered meaningless despite many months of hearings.

The only success of the inquiry was the public appearances by many of the key players, such as former taoiseach Brian Cowen, Central Bank governor Patrick Holohan, and top bankers to explain their role on key decisions such as the night of the bank guarantee, the decision to nationalise Anglo Irish Bank and the absence of any meaningful regulation during the years 2002 to 2008.

With the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions last Friday and the welcome call from Taoiseach Micheál Martin that the emergency is over, attention has shifted to what sort of inquiry there should be to examine the country’s handling of the pandemic.

Extraordinary decisions have been taken since March 12, 2020, when then taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced Ireland’s first lockdown. It was a moment of real emergency. We knew little of this virus and its potential to wound or kill us.

Since then we have endured a rollercoaster of ups and downs, new variants, closures, cancelled holidays and family gatherings, not being able to mourn our dead properly, and on and on.

More than €32bn in Covid-19 spending, all borrowed money, by the way, has been extended to react to the impact of such closures.

It is absolutely right and proper that we have a full inquiry into what happened, but if it is to mean anything, then it can’t be a repeat of the Banking Inquiry.

We must get a full understanding of what other countries did in the pandemic, and why.

The Taoiseach and his ministers trot out the line that of course mistakes were made during the pandemic but that any inquiry should not be a witch hunt.

A shudder runs through me when I hear that, as such an approach means that ultimately punches will be pulled, as happened in the past, or that those who made mistakes will escape any sort of accountability.

What I also fear is that the permanent government, i.e. the civil service, will seek, as it always does, to insulate itself from its handling of the pandemic.

It has been argued again and again that Ireland, by comparison with many countries, has had a good pandemic in terms of the State’s response.

This is based on the low number of deaths, relatively speaking, the absence of repeated surges on our hospital system, and that our economy has proven to be remarkably resilient, notwithstanding the wallop inflicted upon it.

But what is largely absent from such spin is the horrendous cost caused by prolonged infringements on our personal liberties.

In a repeated bid to save our hospital system, we imposed severe lockdown restrictions on people, families, and businesses — many of them totally arbitrary — in a bid to reduce overall transmissions rates.

Any inquiry into Ireland’s handling must include:

• An assessment of Government decision making between March 2020 and January 2022;
• An assessment of the National Public Health Emergency Team and other advisory groups;
• An assessment of the civil and public service during the pandemic;
• An economic impact assessment of the pandemic;
• A societal study on vulnerable groups during the pandemic including the elderly, children, and the lonely, including examining the role of the media;
• A comparative analysis with other countries as to their approach on lockdowns, hospital management, and the use of Covid-19 restrictions.

This is not an exhaustive list but covers what have to be the main issues worthy of examination.

Let’s take a look at them one by one.

Government decision-making: The use of lockdown as the default mechanism during the two years is certainly open to question, both in terms of the length of such lockdowns and their severity.

Refusals to adopt antigen testing much sooner and the scandal in terms of the deaths in nursing homes are also obvious matters to be delved into.

In terms of money, the huge waste in buying personal protective equipment, circa €375m, and no questions asked is worthy of a book in its own right. The levels of fraud in people getting the pandemic unemployment payment and allowing companies in receipt of State support to pay themselves large dividends are all matters worthy of investigation.

However, the most politically sensitive issue for this and the previous government to answer for will be the decision to open up over Christmas 2020, which had a profoundly negative impact on policy-making in 2021. The decision to close schools was also a major mistake, and several ministers already have conceded that point privately. Ministers also fear the fallout from what happened in nursing homes and their failure to address that properly at the time in 2020.

Nphet: The rise of Nphet and how it exercised its new enhanced role must be a central part of any inquiry. Legitimate criticism of this unelected group about many of its decisions from antigen testing to not protecting nursing homes early on, to the extreme nature of its advice and its reliance on lockdown as its default response to new waves must be examined. But individual decisions which had profound impacts on people’s lives must be scrutinised and an assessment reached.

Pictured (l to r) Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group; Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer; and Professor Martin Cormican, Clinical Lead on Infection Control, HSE at a Coronavirus press briefing. Photograph: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

The decision to use the Nphet model rather than the National Emergency Co-ordination Group (NECG), which is the body that handles weather and other emergencies and draws from many departments and agencies, is a critical one.

My understanding is that the then government and then health minister Simon Harris wanted to go with the NECG but were warned that it would be “too big” so Nphet was chosen instead. One would like to see that question answered.

Civil/public service: While many manned the front lines, the current backlog in the passport office is a telling example of how in places the system was allowed to fall apart. Many departments/agencies that were public-facing stopped operating efficiently or at all. This needs to be examined and we need to ensure a better solution.

An economic assessment: For way too long during the pandemic, we as a nation saw Covid-19 through the narrow prism of public health. The devastation caused to small businesses and people’s livelihoods were relegated and need to be explored fully.

Society: It will only be in the coming weeks and months that we will learn the full extent of the toll this pandemic has taken on the Irish people. Again the lack of elderly voices or those advocating for the rights of children during the past two years has done real damage. Also, there needs to be a human rights assessment on the emergency legislation and the reduction in our freedoms.

Some in my industry may not like this, but the role of the national media must also be examined. For example, it is a legitimate criticism as to why we continue to publish daily case numbers when their relevance to the overall picture is greatly diminished. Another aspect to examine is the spending of large sums of money by the Government in advertising in newspapers, TV, and online and what impact it had if any on editorial decision making.

What others did: This is a critical element to consider in any review. We must get a full understanding of what other countries did and why. The obvious one was the frustration felt here during 2021 when we remained largely locked up when most, if not all, other EU countries were open for business.

Most are agreed that some form of inquiry into this dark chapter of our country’s history is merited. But it is only worth doing if it has teeth, can identify what went wrong and, yes, those from Government to Nphet and the media who had a hand in those mistakes.