Editor’s Note
How long does the Covid-19 pandemic have to continue before it stops being an ‘emergency’? When that point is reached, the National Public Health Emergency Team can be shut down, and doctors will cease to dictate terms of commerce. Unfortunately, the precedent isn’t encouraging — the World War II ‘Emergency’ lasted for five years, even when the Germans were being pushed out of France. Official Ireland seems to like emergencies. Police have free rein to boss around citizens on the roads, in pubs and on beaches, and workplace inspectors can spread alarm with their two-metre measuring rods. Politicians can intone in the name of saving lives, while medics and academics — all of them in jobs for life paid from the public purse — can scaremonger to their hearts’ content.
In the real world meanwhile, c.220,000 people thrown out of work by the lockdown have to make do with the €350 a week Pandemic Unemployment Payment, while another 85,000 jobless are on the reduced PUP rate of €203 a week. They’re in addition to the 220,000 people in receipt of regular unemployment benefits. On life support are the 415,000 employees spread among 68,000 employers whose pay is being subsidised by the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme. Most of those individuals will retain their employment when the TWSS is wound down, but a large chunk of them won’t. On current trends, when the dust settles the unemployment number could be around 500,000.
The original Covid-19 lockdown rationale was to safeguard inadequate hospital treatment capacity. That objective was achieved and now the reason has shifted to suppressing the disease so that hospitals can handle regular treatments. At some stage someone in political leadership must have the courage to shout out that Covid-19 will endure until a vaccine is found. The current policy thrust is to socially distant Ireland to ‘best-in-class’ infection status, but that won’t wash when so many people’s livelihoods depend on personal engagement.
Government actions decimated business activity and the state has coughed up to keep firms ticking over. Additional measures announced in the Stimulus Plan are welcome too, though what’s also required is a National Employment Emergency Team. A non-medical NEET might bring to the table the cold reality that Ireland is, or was, one of the most open economies in the world, which relies for its prosperity on American investment. When it comes to the stage that hostelries on the western seaboard are showing Yanks the door, it’s clear that government’s Covid-19 messaging must start striking a more reassuring tone.