Poor Pat is driven to despair, writes Declan Lynch

Monday, Newstalk, 9am-12 noon

I’ll tell you what you don’t want to be — you don’t want to be someone from the HSE being questioned by Pat Kenny on a Monday morning when it seems that everything is out of control.

Because in this and in many other areas, long before anyone in broadcasting thought it was the way to go, Pat has been “following the science”.

In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that he loves the science — and that he is at his happiest when he is wearing his proverbial white coat in the proverbial lab, staring into the proverbial microscope.

In a world of generalities, Pat is a man for the fine detail — he has been known to actually read books before he interviews the authors. And as he continues his own personal battle for the truth about Covid-19, to his formidable brain-power is added the righteous anger of the man who can see where it’s all going wrong.

The rest of us could see that Paddy has somehow contrived to have some of the worst Covid figures in the world — but Pat Kenny would be among the few to look with rigorous honesty into that particular heart of darkness. All his life, it seems, he has stood apart from his compatriots, with his dedication to the power of reason at every turn.

And that was before Paddy went top of the Covid table.

No, you don’t want to be someone from the HSE facing that galvanised version of Pat, on a Monday or any other morning. Not with the fire in him now.

Yet that is exactly what happened to Anne O’Connor, Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the HSE, and it was quite a thing all round. Because while Pat took the fight to her, relentlessly, she maintained an almost impossible level of calmness which meant that she was somehow “alive” at the end of it.

Here was Pat on his reaction to hearing that routine testing had been installed in nursing homes.

“I was told, yeah , they’re tested once a fortnight… which is utterly useless… useless… absolutely useless…”

The COO did not agree that it was useless.

But Pat was only warming to his theme, aghast at how people “kind-of boast of testing in nursing homes with such an inadequate testing regime… sure it’s a recipe for infection…”

As he described with some precision how this recipe would work, again, Anne O’Connor didn’t agree — but not in a way that made Pat feel bad, not about himself anyway.

He was on to the antigen testing now: “it should be used virtually on a daily basis, and you can keep people working who are not infectious and you can send people home as soon as they are infectious… but for some reason the HSE and the politicians have turned their backs on this very useful tool…”

The COO outlined plans for the improvement of testing, and then there was a pause.

I’ll tell you what you don’t want to be — you don’t want to be the person on the other end of the line when you’ve said something that leaves Pat speechless for a few seconds, until he can find the composure to continue.

“I sometimes despair of this,” he said, finally, “because there are lessons to be learned from other jurisdictions which we resolutely refuse to learn… we were late on masks, we were late on so many things, and we’ll be late on antigen testing too…”

Soon Pat was calling out this whole benighted race of ours: “What is it with this jurisdiction… it’s all wishy washy… we have guidelines, not rules…”

But it was when they got to the part about the testing of the HSE’s own frontline workers not being mandatory, that Pat reached a point of incandescence. The COO wished it were otherwise, but pointed out that there’s no legal basis for making it mandatory.

“Did I hear right?”… and again you don’t want to be saying something to Pat, and him asking you if he heard right.

The COO said they haven’t had a problem with this, but Pat had a problem with it: “That is unconscionable… that someone can say I’m not taking a test, and I’m going on the ward, I mean, that’s crazy stuff.”

It was a remarkable encounter, which left me believing every word that both of them were saying.

Next morning, Pat kicked off with the Taoiseach: “I have to ask you, are you ashamed?...”