Irate ministers believe Holohan revelations may breach Official Secrets rules
FURY is growing within Cabinet over former chief medical officer Tony Holohan’s book, sources told the Irish Mail on Sunday this weekend.
Ministers are even questioning whether he should have been permitted to publish his book revealing confidential details of the Government’s pandemic management prior to an official Covid inquiry.
In the book, We Need To Talk, Holohan discusses Cabinet meetings he attended which were covered by laws on Cabinet confidentiality and senior Gov- ernment figures have pointed out Dr Holohan technically violated the Official Secrets Act.
There is also a feeling among ministers and a number of Dr Holohan’s former colleagues on the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) that he is ‘bitter’ about how his proposed move with Trinity College was scuppered.
When contacted by the MoS, the publishers of Dr Holohan’s memoir Ériu, responded to accusations that the Officials Secrets Act may have been breached. ‘Ériu made arrangements to have We Need To Talk legally reviewed prior to publication, and we are satisfied that no legal issues arise,’ said Deirdre Nolan of Ériu. ‘Readers are entitled to their own views on the book. Ériu is pleased to note that We Need to Talk has reached No1 in the nonfiction charts in its first week.’
Cabinet sources last night were furious that while Dr Holohan doesn’t admit to any mistakes, he accuses ministers of causing deaths by ignoring his advice.
A senior Cabinet source, who was known to have clashed with the former CMO during the pandemic, said: ‘It’s disappointing that he doesn’t apply the same logic to his decisions that he applies to us when judging what we did wrong.’
Another source said: ‘Some of the decisions that Dr Holohan and his NPHET colleagues made remain at least baffling and, more strongly, absolutely wrongheaded. Take the decisions that Tony recommended, not using facemasks and the use of antigen tests. When compared to other jurisdictions, these decisions were flawed. Not sure I saw an admission of that in his book.’
A minister agreed with the solicitor of late CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan when they described the book as ‘self-serving’. And some Cabinet ministers who served in Government during the pandemic are particularly appalled at one passage, which also aggrieved Leo Varadkar.
The Taoiseach and Dr Holohan have clashed publicly since the publication of the book, primarily over the decision of Government to modify NPHET’s advice to close hospitality but allow substantial socialisation in private homes in the run up to Christmas 2020.
On page 216 of his book, Dr Holohan makes incredible claims about his political superiors. After Christmas, he recalls, Ireland had to return to full Level 5 restrictions anyway, but again, ignoring NPHET, the Government did it ‘much more slowly than recommended’ by the group he chaired. ‘The decisions made and not made regarding the advice from the NPHET, and also from me as CMO, as well as the signal that retaining hospitality gave, created the circumstances in which so many people died,’ writes Dr Holohan. He adds that he ‘cannot say that all of the deaths in January 2021 could have been prevented. But I think we should have prevented a lot more of them.’
A minister says that this makes a ‘grievous charge’ against the entire Cabinet, and then-Taoiseach Micheál Martin in particular.
‘Besides the gratuitousness of the charge, it’s not even true,’ said the minister who was in a pivotal role during the pandemic. ‘NPHET had, in fact, recommended widespread socialisation in private homes and limited hospitality. We had deduced that socialisation in private homes was as damaging, if not more damaging than in hospitality, where at least things could be monitored and contained.’
Ministers said that Dr Holohan’s ‘self-serving’ account would have been more palatable if he had admitted to some mistakes. ‘If you ask me five things I got wrong during my time as minister and five things I got right I could answer you,’ said a Cabinet source, ‘I’m not sure that is the case with Tony..
Ministers are also ‘shocked’ that Dr Holohan would publish his book before the Covid inquiry has even had its terms of references rubberstamped by Government.
‘Let’s hope for one thing, that Tony is a lot more self-critical at the inquiry,’ said a minister. ‘I’m not sure that it is correct at all for such a book to be published before the hearings. It indicates a strangely inflated ego at work, firstly. But it could be viewed very seriously, that he has sought to influence the inquiry. Also there are lines in it where he discusses the exchanges at Cabinet subcommittees and private meetings with Cabinet ministers. There are Official Secrets issues here.’
There is a feeling in Government that much of the animosity in Dr Holohan’s book is motivated by unhappiness that his planned move to Trinity College was scuppered after political controversy.
A spokesman for Leo Varadkar said that he would not comment on the passage in Dr Holohan’s book directly this weekend, but referred the MoS to comments the Taoiseach had made in New York about the book two weeks ago, when he stated: ‘I’d hope everyone would be reflective about their role during that period, and not always think that they were always right.’
Responding to claims in Mr Holohan’s book, a Government spokesperson also told the MoS this weekend: ‘A comprehensive evaluation of how the country managed Covid-19 will provide an opportunity to learn lessons from our experiences in dealing with a pandemic...It is intended that it will be established in 2023.’
‘It indicates a strangely inflated ego at work’