Varadkar’s nasty attack on top doc leaves public not knowing who to trust
NOW that Tony Holohan has been exposed in Leo Varadkar’s eyes as the head of an out-of-touch elite with ill-thought-out theories, presumably he won’t be getting the Freedom of the City of Dublin any more. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party councillors will get a diktat from Government Buildings telling them to vote down the proposal to honour a patriot.
Dissent is no longer acceptable under this administration, so they had better do as they’re told.
Unleashed from his selfisolation, the Tánaiste cut loose on the public official whose advice his government accepted unquestioningly just a few months ago. From hero to zero on live TV.
Led by Holohan, the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) strongly proposed moving to the highest level of restrictions to control the coronavirus,
While the caretaker Taoiseach Micheál Martin stood by, the real taoiseach openly attacked Holohan and the State’s public health experts for putting forward proposals he says were not thought out and experimental.
Holohan had his Patrick Honohan moment. Ten years ago, the-then governor of the Central Bank got fed up with the lies being told to the people and came out to say the State would need a bailout. The chief medical officer came back to his role, saw Nphet’s advice not being taken seriously and a Government failing to implement its own plan to live with Covid-19 through an utter lack of engagement and enforcement. Nphet put forward a short, sharp shock to the political system and public at large.
Holohan certainly overplayed his hand, but that didn’t justify Varadkar taking it on himself to destroy a man’s credibility and character.
Not even during the economic crash did we witness a public servant getting such an extreme dressing-down. The officials who claimed there was no liquidity problems with the banks and were complicit with the banking sector and political leadership in the loss of our sovereignty were never humiliated in this fashion.
Instead of taking Nphet’s advice on board but not accepting it, Varadkar’s calculated decapitation displayed his nasty streak.
Rather than being honest with people and saying the Government feels there is an acceptable level of infection and death, the Coalition has muddied the water by blaming Nphet for giving bad advice. On a basic level, the public dressing-down was highly unprofessional and does nothing to reassure the public there is a functioning government in control.
The curtain was pulled back and the audience saw the squabbling among the cast.
Holohan does not head up the National Public Health Economic Team, nor the National Public Finances Emergency Team.
Frustrated about the way things are going within an inadequate Government, Varadkar decided to take it out on Holohan.
Within Government, there’s an argument Holohan came back, didn’t like the decisionmaking structures put in place in his absence, made a stand and got manners put on him. Nobody is in any doubt about who’s the boss now. But at what cost. Varadkar has polarised views on who people trust: the politicians or the doctors.
Trust in neither will be the likely result.
Varadkar’s patronising characterisation of the members of Nphet as “good people”, but only from a medical, scientific or civil service background, was him at his populist worst.
“None of those people, for example, faced being on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment yesterday. None of them would have to tell people they were losing their job. None of them would have to shutter a business for the last time,” he stated cheaply.
How many around the Cabinet table have opened, let alone closed up, a business? The vast majority of them are career politicians, some of whom have never had a job outside of Leinster House.
And the Tánaiste is really going to tell us this Cabinet is in touch with ordinary life?
This is the Government that voted through pay rises for ministers while nurses were given a round of applause.
This is the Government that appointed political advisers on the same day it cut the Pandemic Unemployment
Payment for workers who had been put out of their jobs.
Dissent
The Tánaiste claimed the politicians see “the bigger picture”. The bigger picture now is the public is left not knowing what to think.
The chief medical officer, whom people got to know,
admire and trust has effectively been struck off by the Government as someone to deliver sound advice.
This Government does not want dissenting voices. Varadkar wants a group akin to the Fiscal Advisory Council, who come in after the event and give an opinion that’s too late to influence any outcome.
Micheál Martin would want to be sure his theory is right on this occasion and he doesn’t end up doing another state of the nation in a month’s time, shutting down schools and cancelling Christmas.
A decade ago, Varadkar was still a renegade opposition TD, firing off the soundbites, like telling Brian Cowen: “The taoiseach is no Seán Lemass, Jack Lynch or John Bruton. He is a Garret FitzGerald. He has trebled the national debt and effectively destroyed the country.”
The petulant Varadkar was back on display this week. He’s no Garret FitzGerald either, he doesn’t have the class nor the intellect to realise you don’t gain respect by beating someone into submission.
The only comparison you can draw for Varadkar was him having his Pee Flynn moment on the telly, when a politician became utterly convinced of his own bombast as the public watched on uncomfortably.