'Level 5 would come with a huge cost, let’s hope Level 3 doesn’t end up costing us all even more'

GAVAN REILLY COLUMN

One of the jibes we political journalists regularly get from colleagues in other fields is that our jobs are very ‘safe’ and sanitised. They’ve got a point: while they’re out getting rained on at crime scenes, we’re swanning around on Dublin 2’s cleanest carpets. It says a lot that I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to work without wearing a suit: it’s that sort of cosseted existence. The hours are tough but the environs are better than most.

So sometimes you get to wondering what it would be like to really be out getting your fingers or face dirty. What would it be like as a war correspondent? How would it feel, embedded in a unit while it faces enemy fire? What would it have been like, as a western reporter on the streets of Baghdad, keeping a straight face as Comical Ali denied the existence of the American tanks on the streets behind him?

We got an unexpected answer to that last night. Baghdad has come to Dublin 2 and the tanks are heading in Tony Holohan’s direction.

Before I explain that, some context. Yesterday was a case study in top-level miscommunication. Nobody can say for certain exactly how NPHET’s recommendation for Level 5 lockdown managed to the media, but suffice to say there are 40 members of NPHET, four ministers who receive their advice, and around 20 more staff in the inner circles of those ministers. There’s no shortage of people who could be tapped up for the information. But that’s immaterial: the information got out and we all went to bed on Sunday night with a looming dread about how lonely the dark nights could be. The Government’s job, therefore, was to act quickly to give certainty: are we going into lockdown, or are we not? Yet it took until 12 noon for Holohan to be hauled in, nearly 4pm before the party leaders had decided a collective approach, and 9pm to actually announce it. The Government’s response to leaking was… leaking.

The Governments is perfectly entitled to dismiss NPHET’s recommendations if it wants. In fact, NPHET’s ‘control’ over ministers has been one of the great myths of the last nine months: politicians who claimed Holohan was actually running the country, were sidelined not by the chief medical officer but by the cabinet sub-committee which pre-baked all the ideas. NPHET’s remit is actually fairly slim: to consider the potential spread of the virus and recommend health policy accordingly. It’s up to others to bring other perspectives to the table, such as whether a lockdown is affordable or tolerable, or weigh up the social and economic consequences. To put it simply: it’s not Tony Holohan’s job to consider whether having an All-Ireland championship will boost public morale, and it’s not Ronan Glynn’s job to design a social welfare system for those who lose their jobs as a result.

You might not have got that impression from Leo Varadkar though, if you watched him eviscerate Holohan and NPHET on Claire Byrne Live last night. There was one grain of validity to the Tánaiste’s grievances: if even the HSE weren’t worried about their facilities being overwhelmed, NPHET should not have said otherwise (though it’s weird that NPHET would apparently get this wrong when there are so many HSE reps at its table). But beyond that Varadkar complained that NPHET were almost in an ivory tower, ignorant and uncaring of the economy and how it would suffer under a second lockdown.

Reminder: that’s not NPHET’s job. Last month the Government literally created a new civil service co-ordination group to bring the other perspectives to the table: while Tony Holohan and chums consider the health impact, the country’s highest-ranking civil servant Martin Fraser and a series of other top mandarins consider the other impacts. The Government then weighs up the two sets of advice and makes its decision.

But that wasn’t sufficient for Varadkar, who told Claire Byrne that Holohan hadn’t thought through what happens if four weeks of lockdown didn’t work (though I don’t remember that being a problem in mid-April…) or how the Department of Social Protection could possibly prepare for another half-million applications for the pandemic payment. Neither of which, you’ll have picked up by now, are NPHET’s job.

To be blunt, if I were Tony Holohan, I’d be wondering whether there’s any point going back into a burning building, and getting pummelled on live television for being a fireman without a social welfare policy, when my family circumstances are as they are. I’d probably be handing the badge to Ronan Glynn and telling him life is literally too short to deal with the political ingratitude.

I didn’t get to catch Varadkar in real time; while he was on RTÉ, I was in a parallel universe at the bottom of Government Buildings where everything was tickety-boo – and where Stephen Donnelly, a man who’s had plenty of slips in the last 100 days, was actually giving a fairly capable performance.

There were plenty of horrible questions for him to deal with - what if Holohan is right and you’re wrong? What if this is the last chance to keep schools open? Is this only delaying an even more damaging lockdown in a month? - but Donnelly remained calm, and explained that the Government had to consider more than just the virus. There’s a balance between public health and economic health, Donnelly and Paschal Donohoe told us; it’s totally natural for Government to dissect NPHET’s views and for there to be a healthy tension between the two bodies. NPHET’s role is to recommend; Government’s role is to decide, and so it ever shall be. “The relationship with NPHET is absolutely fine,” he said.

You’d have totally believed him if you didn’t have Twitter open in front of you, reading in real-time about how Leo Varadkar said NPHET’s proposals weren’t thought through, or intimating that its fears for the health service are Chicken Licken stuff.

The same as you’d have believed Comical Ali’s assurance that the Americans were nowhere near controlling Baghdad, were it not for the American tanks you could see over his shoulder as they moved ever closer to Saddam.

You’d laugh if the consequences weren’t so dire. It’s possible the government is completely correct in assessing that NPHET’s warnings will never come to pass - that the sky will not fall in, that the health service will be able to cope with the volume of cases, and that a firm public response to Level 3 will be enough to keep the virus at bay. Let’s hope they’re right - it’s clearly in our interests to hope so.

But what if they’re not? What if Tony Holohan’s letter to Stephen Donnelly is right? What if this is the last chance to stop a cataclysmic shutdown? What if avoiding lockdown now only means an even longer one later? What if we refuse one stitch now, and need nine in a few weeks? What will that mean for all of us - for our livelihoods, for our families, for our schools, for our wellbeing, for Christmas? What will it mean for our hospitals, for our cancer patients, for our mental health? What if we lose too much time now, the system is overrun, and others start dying because Covid patients have claimed every bed?

The Government is today 101 days old. The decision it took yesterday is easily the biggest it has made to date; it may well be the biggest it faces in its full term. Level 5 would come with a huge cost; let’s hope Level 3 doesn’t end up costing us all even more.

On that, though, our futures are still in our own hands. Good luck, everyone.