GAVAN REILLY: A week of highs and lows in the Covid chase

There was a moment last week where it seemed Fianna Fáil were going Full Trump. The word from its parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday night was that Stephen Donnelly believed the party had got a raw deal; that the apparent confusion over the new five-level Living With Covid plan (and the sixth level for Dublin) was all the fault of outsiders.

There was a limited amount of truth to this. The confusion on Tuesday over the exact rules that applied to Dublin was regrettable, but by Wednesday ministers generally seemed to be back on the same page. Micheál Martin was asked repeatedly in the Dáil to state whether Dubliners could leave the county for a staycation, or to attend a wedding, and said nobody should be leaving the county for non-essential reasons. Fairly clear, no? It still didn’t stop other parties saying the picture was confused and demanding further clarity.

That said, last Tuesday was hardly a masterclass in governmental communications. Last week I wrote about my hopes that the Living With Covid plan would be a chance to press the ‘reset’ button and draw a line under the previous weeks of confusion. It didn’t quite turn out that way: the Taoiseach got tetchy and confrontational when asked some fairly basic questions about the status of Dublin, and when asked how counties could move between levels, referred to the wrong page in a document we hadn’t yet been given.

Moreover, in 52 minutes of a press conference, not once did Martin, Leo Varadkar or Stephen Donnelly list the five restrictions that Dublin would be placed under. A subsequent notice on the Government’s website only listed four of them, and Donnelly then went on radio to contradict the travel advice and say Dubliners “absolutely” could leave the county.

And although everyone involved acted in good faith when Donnelly later fell ill and the Cabinet voluntarily went into restricted movements, the abandonment of the Dáil was the cherry on a very crumbly cake. On a day when the Government was supposed to be showing us how we’d live alongside Covid-19, the reaction when Covid arrived on its own doorstep was hardly a level-headed textbook response.

The world moves in mysterious ways, though. Tuesday was a botched attempt but Friday presented another chance to get it right. Nobody wanted Dublin to hit Level 3 so quickly but it was a second opportunity to get the message right. This time around, Martin nailed it: there was no opening word salad, no faffing around, no plamásing, just a sobering reminder of what was needed. The following Q&A was a step up too: there were a few flubbed questions, but the substance was fine. (It was observed that the best media event since the new government took over, was the one that Stephen Donnelly missed…)

Let’s hope for more along those lines, though more recent days haven’t been ideal. The Taoiseach told Newstalk yesterday that travel to Green List countries is still discouraged (no it’s not: read the advice) and, fat from telling listeners they shouldn’t go to a house party, suggested flatmates should take on a policing role.