Ireland’s long-awaited review of how the State handled the Covid-19 pandemic is, finally, out of the traps.
On Thursday, its chair, Professor Anne Scott, launched a public consultation seeking input from ordinary people and groups on how they were impacted by the pandemic.
It’s hardly a bad idea to cast a wide net and seek submissions from those who want their experiences formally recorded, and it is clearly welcome that those views will help shape the report and the approach to future pandemics. But it is already known that the Covid pandemic was exceptionally difficult for everyone. The evaluation says it will go deeper than that, although its powers are limited. It must challenge itself to do so, or risk underperforming expectations.
Measured by deaths alone, Ireland performed well compared to other jurisdictions. There will be different views as to whether long and brutal lockdowns were justified – certainly on their own terms, which was to preserve life, they were. While that is the most important factor, and was the organising principle for the response when faced with a threat of such scale, the assessment must be broader. The evaluation team seems well aware of this fact, and it promises to embrace not just the lived experience of ordinary people, but how the political world and civil service organised itself in response.
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This is no mean task.
The pandemic consumed political and public life for two years, with the entire policymaking apparatus focused on managing the disease. Many billions were deployed to support households and firms. Many lives were lost, more were interrupted, and in some cases, their trajectories fundamentally altered.
It is unlikely that key decision makers will be grilled in public. The approach will be non-confrontational, it will not be focused on individual accountability, and it will not seek to point fingers or to apportion blame
The evaluation team has received significant volumes of documentation relating to the management of the pandemic, and plans to engage with all the key stakeholders, as well as holding some public sessions. All this is welcome – but the non-statutory “evaluation” of how Ireland performed seems structurally underequipped to deliver what the public might expect from it.
On Thursday, Prof Scott was at pains to point out repeatedly that Ireland’s will not be a public inquiry like seen in the UK. It is unlikely that key decision makers will be grilled in public. While Prof Scott has indicated she will seek sensitive and secret material if she feels it is necessary, she will have no powers to compel its release. She emphasised that the approach will be non-confrontational, it will not be focused on individual accountability, and it will not seek to point fingers or to apportion blame. “This isn’t about really living in the past. It is about learning lessons,” she said.
The pandemic saw a huge amount of power sucked into the centre of the “system”. A small group of politicians and officials, operating with reduced checks and balances, made decisions that had universal impacts. They may have done so in good faith, and in nearly impossible circumstances, but the scale of the upheaval gives a mandate for an approach based on maximum disclosure and public scrutiny. The question is whether the evaluation team has the powers, intent and remit to pursue this.
As it stands, the risk is that it will be seen as an approach designed by those in power at the time – many of whom are still in power – which suits them more than it might satisfy the public interest.
