If Martin doesn’t get it together, his goose will be cooked by Christmas ‘W
THE MATT COOPER COLUMN
E didn’t discuss Christmas,’ Micheál Martin said yesterday in response to a question as to how the new five levels of Covid-19 restrictions might impact on one of the most popular and important times of the year for the majority of people.
Well, it falls within the six- to nine-month time duration covered by the new regulations, so you might have thought that the Government would have given some consideration to what will happen over Christmas.
Are Irish emigrants allowed to travel home from foreign countries for the season? Are people going to move around Ireland to visit family and friends? Are festive work parties a no-no?
Add in your own questions but there are no answers as yet. Of course it is impossible to say what the infection numbers will be at Christmas but yesterday was supposed to be about providing details of planning and preparing for various scenarios.
Clarity
And the Taoiseach should have some response prepared: a bit of reassurance from Martin that the Government will do what it can in the circumstances to avoid cancelling Christmas would not have gone amiss.
This Government seems to be unable to help itself however. Yesterday’s press conference was an opportunity to give clear information on the new system of five levels of measures appropriate to outbreaks, to be applied on a county-by-county basis. So far, so good. Clarity was the word being emphasised. But there was precious little clarity on display.
Almost immediately, the Government said that Dublin would be treated as a different case despite being at Level 2 of the new scale, as per the rest of the country. Dublin is at level two, but ‘with modifications’. A 2.5, if you will, or a two and a bit, or whatever you’re having, given that it is a bit nearer to two than three in the measures being applied but possibly nearer to three than two in how the county is performing on new cases.
NPHET will give further advice tomorrow and the expectation is that it will want Dublin to be moved to Level 3, with the even tighter restrictions that apply, next week. The new figure of 218 cases of the 357 being in the capital won’t help stave that off.
Health Minister Stephen Donnelly didn’t deny that possibility when I interviewed him (by phone) yesterday shortly before he went to have a Covid-19 test.
Pointedly, the Government won’t rely merely on NPHET for that decision but will call on a new board of unnamed experts, chaired by the secretary of the Department of An Taoiseach too. Get all that?
It got worse. At the press conference, Martin didn’t list or explain what additional measures are applying to Dublin in its suspended animation between Levels 2 and 3. People were left to read the accompanying documents to discover there are restrictions on the number of visitors to the house and on travel beyond the county bounds. The pubs not serving food can’t also open next Monday like the rest of the ‘wet’ pubs countrywide. And higher and third-level institutions ‘should consider enhanced protective measures’, whatever they are.
People turned to yesterday’s press conference expecting to be informed about the future by a Government that has had months to prepare for this. But, for example, the issue about how to manage travel by flights into and out of the country is unlikely to be decided before the end of October and will be driven by EU consensus. Martin was unsure, too, about how many people would be allowed at sports events where the ground capacity is far more than 5,000.
And, bizarrely, he told one journalist his question should be addressed to the (acting) Chief Medical Officer. The only problem was that, for the first time, Dr Ronan Glynn wasn’t on the podium to answer questions.
Martin’s initial speech yesterday had some of the type of lines of praise to the public we have come to expect from such occasions. He spoke about ‘protecting health’, ‘strengthening employment’ and ‘supporting communities’ – and championed resilience and flexibility. Which is all well and good but he was short on the details of how to achieve all of that. Then again, that is what an increasingly impatient electorate has come to expect.
And if this Government doesn’t up its game in this regard – the Budget in mid-October being its next big test – then our Christmas plans might have to include electing a new Dáil to provide us with a new government.