Critics will call out to Varadkar and Harris: ‘Knave if you knew and Fool if you did not’

THE first time I took note of this “damned if you did/ damned if you did not” line of thinking was back in May 1970 at the height of the Arms Trial controversy.

Some people loved to declaim that, as Taoiseach, Jack Lynch just had to know that his senior ministers, Charlie Haughey and Neil Blaney, were – allegedly – up to their oxters in trying to illegally supply guns to Catholics threatened by sectarian violence in the North.

At the time, the entire nation was focused on the trial, which led to the acquittal of Haughey and Blaney in Dublin, as the violent ferment in the North continued. For many people Jack Lynch was either a treacherous weasel or an incompetent fool.

“Lynch is a knave if he did know. Or, he’s a fool if he did not,” an elderly neighbour blurted at my father, long before my schoolboy ears could be ushered away to a safe distance. The phrase lingered in my head though it took some years to learn its meaning and usage.

The notion is as old as politics – but not old for nothing. Its persistence showed as early yesterday People Before Profit TD, Bríd Smith, gave it an outing yet again. This followed the release on Thursday evening of Health Service Executive memos dating from summer of 2016.

These memos straddle a time when the current Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, was in his latter days as health minister, and the early months in office of his successor, Simon Harris. Among other things, these memos told us the HSE was well aware of problems with the cancer smear test system, and was also planning, in a most self-interested way, to manage a potential media furore.

Late on Thursday we also learned that these memos were also known about at a senior level in the Health Department. But we have since been told again and again that knowledge of these memos never reached the offices of the health minister himself – neither on the watch of Mr Varadkar, nor that of Mr Harris.

Cue Bríd Smith and that “fool or knave” theory: “If Varadkar or Harris knew nothing about these memos, they are naïve, incompetent fools who do not understand how bureaucracies work … For that alone, they should resign. But I don’t believe they are fools.” Thus, she pithily adjudged, that they are knaves who should quit – as opposed to fools who should quit. No surprise that she would sack them on either ground.

That fool or knave theme, and various spin-offs, will be heard again and again in the coming week. Another opportunity for those who like their politics to re-engage their prejudices.

At the same time fasten your seatbelts for an extended tour of the word “know” – surely one of the slipperiest terms in the political lexicon. Does a minister only know something if it is passed to him or her in written form? What does he/she “know” of things which are openly talked about in corridors and tearooms? What about “rumour” or “surmise”, which are the stock in trade of those who people our political and administrative systems?

In the past, many denials of knowledge have in effect been denials of formal knowledge, delivered in writing and through the proper channels.

So, in this instance the spectrum is narrowed considerably. We are talking about a set of written memos in the Health Service Executive in March and July 2016. The resulting questions are very simple by standards of much else that surrounds this issue: Did you see these 2016 HSE memos back then? Did you see them at any time since, before they were dramatically and very belatedly revealed this week?

And in reply so far, we are talking about some pretty emphatic and unambiguous statements that neither Mr Varadkar nor Mr Harris saw them in their role as health minister, or indeed any other capacity. They are backed up by the Health Department itself, which has emphatically and clearly stated that these memos never reached ministerial level.

Both the Taoiseach and the health minister are entitled to be taken at face value on this right now. They must know better than most that recent history teaches us that a trawl of documentation – such as that now planned by the scoping inquiry headed by Dr Gabriel Scallan – would surely expose any dissembling or equivocation, otherwise called lies.

In the medium to longer term, some other issues merit serious consideration if we are to make any progress out of the current distressing morass. We need to know who decided not to tell the health minister about this matter, especially the memos?

We need to know what authority that person or persons had to deprive the minister of such important knowledge. That will automatically lead us to re assess why we elect a government at all if it plays such a weak role in ordering our affairs.

Based on all we know, it is clear we need radical change, bringing in a much less cluttered administration showing clear lines of responsibility. The current Byzantine organogram is a device for senior health administrators who want to duck and dive and claim all problems are caused by “systems”. There is an urgent need to take the HSE publicity strategy and see it as emblematic of the entire organisation’s culture.

The sentence which screams out from the July 2016 memo reads: “Continue to prepare for a media headline that ‘screening did not diagnose my cancer.’” It is a clear indicator that the paramount rule is cover your posterior first and last.