Government Covid communications strategy is a mixed up, muddled mess

SAY what you like about the new Government’s Covid19 communications strategy but you can’t deny that it’s original. Rather than adopt a method involving clear, concise statements and policies, Micheál Martin and his cabinet appear to favour a entirely different approach.

In what often feels like an effort to confuse the virus into submission, the Government’s communication ‘strategy’ – such as it is –has descended into farce.

Where once, in the early days of the pandemic, we had clear messaging that set out defined aims, there is now confusion, muddled ministers and poorly explained policies.

The latest example of the Government’s shambolic attempts to keep the people informed came with the cack-handed manner in which the updated rules for pubs were announced.

The new measures – which see publicans obliged to hold the details of all food orders for 28 days – do make sense, once you dig down into the rationale behind them.

However, the way in which they were announced and enacted was nothing short of woeful.

After apparently zero consultation with the businesses that these rules will affect, the new regulations were announced suddenly last Thursday, two days after they were decided by cabinet.

Publicans and restaurant owners were, to put it mildly, more than a little surprised at the latest “suffocating” layer of bureaucracy that was being forced upon them.

Since they were allowed to reopen, any business serving food and drink has had to keep receipts and the new rules are designed to “ensure a level playing field” by making sure that pubs that are brazenly serving drink without any food – and there are many of them – are knocked back into line.

That’s fair enough but, for many people, making the failure to keep receipts and customer records effectively a criminal offence is a step too far by an overreaching ‘nanny state’.

The ‘Stasi’ comparisons are crass and over the top but there is something unpleasant about the new rules.

The notion that a garda will be entitled to enter a pub and get your phone number and the details of what you had for dinner four weeks ago feels extremely invasive and it is easy to see why so many people are vociferously against it.

That such emergency laws often tend to stay on the statute books – and are often abused – long after they are needed is another valid concern.

If such draconian rules are needed the Government needs to clearly set out how they were decided; why they are required; how they will be enforced and when they will be repealed.

Since taking office the coalition has managed to alienate and irritate vast swathes of the population who were previously willing to ‘pull on the green jersey’ and follow the Covid rules.

The collapse in public confidence is almost entirely down to the Government’s confusing, frequently illogical and dismally explained policies. An anxious and addled public deserves better.