Government has to quickly rein in all the confusion
IT’S hard to know what’s going on at the moment and equally hard to know who is in charge. Who do people listen to if they want to their information about an unprecedented pandemic spreading through our country? Do they listen to the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste for guidance on how to tackle the coronavirus? Similarly, do they listen to the current health minister or his predecessor? Or perhaps they should listen to the medical experts? Who knows.
It’s all very confusing and the public is left shouldering the burden of the Government’s failure to communicate their message.
Take Stephen Donnelly, our current health minster, who last week told us the national public health emergency team (Nphet) was very worried about community transmission of the virus – meaning they could not trace the source of new cases of the virus. It’s very worrying, Donnelly told us.
Around the same time he told us this, Nphet was saying community transmission figures were “stable”. Donnelly’s officials claimed there was no discrepancy between the minister’s public utterances and the guidance of health officials despite the blatant conflict between his views and theirs.
However, yesterday the minister took to the airwaves to announce community transmission rates in the country aren’t doing too bad at all. He also got confused when questioned about the rights of workers who get positive coronavirus cases.
The issue of workers hiding test results from employers was raised at a Cabinet subcommittee Donnelly attended but the minister dismissed it as an issue when asked.
The Department of Health, who at first fobbed off questions on the rights of workers, yesterday told the Irish Independent the HSE has in fact given public health doctors the power to inform employers of positive test cases amongst staff without even informing the employee first.
This comes just a few months after chief medical officer Tony Holohan said it would be a breach of privacy to do the same. Donnelly didn’t seem to know this or decided not to tell listeners this when he was on air. Perhaps this will be his stance during his next interview.
Meanwhile, confusion reins over the Government and its Covid colouring book. Donnelly was pushing his new colour-coded coronavirus alert system yesterday too only to be shot down by Leo Varadkar who insisted nothing had been agreed by the Cabinet.
Meanwhile, Donnelly’s predecessor Simon Harris was out giving his views on how lockdowns should work yesterday. Harris said lockdowns should be more “forensic” rather than pushing restrictions on entire counties.
I’m sure Donnelly was delighted to hear his constituency colleague’s views aired publicly.
However, Harris and other ministers are frustrated with Donnelly’s decision to railroad major pandemic decisions through Cabinet without proper debate. The decision to hold a Cabinet by telephone ahead of announcing a lockdown didn’t sit well with many.
It may be a case of too many cooks but focused Government messaging will be more important than ever with winter fast approaching. With new cases increasing people will need to know who to listen to.