TDs had chance to make a sea-change, but chose the parish pump instead

IF THERE was ever an opportunity to re-imagine how Ireland functions, it has passed now. The chaos caused to life in all its aspects by the Covid-19 pandemic is seen by optimists as a chance to reset, a living embodiment of the wisdom about finding opportunity in adversity.

During the first lockdown, last spring, there were tentative signs that Ireland, as an official entity, was adapting to the convulsive times in a way that could lead to longer-lasting change.

However, look for any evidence of transformation in this current shutdown and the search will be futile.

Despite the deaths of dozens of people every day, and the pressure on the health service tightening like a tourniquet, and thousands of families left to suffer intense stress and sorrow as children with special needs cannot be accommodated during a shameful row, the response this week has been a reversion to politics at its most primal.

The Government failed again with a plan to reopen the schools. Unions representing school staff were a nauseating mix of brazen and unconvincing.

The Opposition, largely massed on the political left, scored easy points off a hapless administration, even as the lockdown continues to do most damage to the under-privileged, whose needs the left claim to prioritise.

There are many adjectives that could be applied to the prevailing condition, but unimaginative is one of the most useful.

The abject failure of imagination by the Irish political class should be remembered as one of the most important lessons of this crisis.

It must be, because it will affect us all for years to come.

The opportunity to revise how business is done by the State is gone, submerged under the dead weight of cynicism and opportunism.

And the most glaring current example relates to vaccines. The story, broken in the pages of this newspaper, about Fianna Fáil TDs Darragh O’Brien – who is also the Minister for Housing – and Jackie Cahill boasting about using their influence to get people vaccinated was extraordinary.

It is irrelevant if the cases that they pushed, on behalf of the Dublin Fire Brigade and Nenagh

Hospital, were deserving; a precedent has now been set whereby politicians can influence a vaccination programme that is one of the most important public health interventions in the history of the State.

The pull of the parish pump remains strong, even in a pandemic.

‘That’s the nature of politics,’

Cahill said, ‘the squeaky hinge gets the most oil.’

It is an utterly dispiriting thought – but it’s also a statement of fact.

This is why an exhausted public learn that the lockdown will be extended into February through leaks from the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil parliamentary parties. It was no surprise, but it is typically shoddy for it to emerge this way.

The old means of doing business remain inviolable.

THEY have served politicians well, even as they have repeatedly failed the people. Few have confidence that schools will reopen on February 1, no matter how the Government might wish for it.

Reopening the schools in September was a rare triumph for Micheál Martin, but now the unions representing school staff are unconvinced by the public health advice around even a very limited resumption for children with additional needs.

This is infuriating and illogical, but it follows rather than sets an alarming precedent.

It was the Government that was eager to pick and choose that same advice when promising a ‘meaningful Christmas’ a few short weeks ago.

And it was the Tánaiste Leo Varadkar who went on television and savaged the National Public Health Emergency Team in a crude power grab last autumn.

Irish politics has shrank back to first principles. The crisis has been wasted. The crisis burns on.