Mick Clifford: Why Ireland must face tough questions about its covid strategy

Ireland’s pandemic response shaped lives, but did it cause more harm than good? A full, honest inquiry is overdue, writes Mick Clifford

Five years on from the arrival of the virus on these shores the tail of the pandemic is still being felt. Picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Big catastrophes often have a long tail, reaching out into the years that follow. Take the economic crash of 2008. The country went through austerity for a few years but due to competent management in one aspect of the economy, recovery was relatively swift in most parts of society. Apart, of course, from the tail which came in the form of a housing crisis. That is having a devastating impact on a cohort of the population, sending ripples right across society.

Covid was in many ways an even bigger catastrophe than the economic crash. As of last November, there have been 10,072 covid-related deaths in this State since the virus first arrived in early 2020. Most of these occurred in the first two years of the pandemic. Recorded cases of the virus are somewhere in excess of 1.7m, with around 1.5m of those being recorded before February 2022.