Tony Holohan meets senior civil servant for talks to clear air after bust-up
Taoiseach keen to defuse tensions between Nphet and Government
UNDER-FIRE chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan held ‘peace talks’ with the country’s most senior civil servant following the fallout from his proposal to impose a second nationwide lockdown.
Mr Holohan met Department of the Taoiseach secretary-general Martin Fraser in Government Buildings at lunchtime yesterday after the controversy surrounding the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) recommendation of Level 5 restrictions for the entire country.
Mr Fraser was understood to be furious about how Mr Holohan’s recommendation for a second lockdown emerged and made his views known at a Cabinet meeting on Monday.
However, yesterday afternoon he held talks with Mr Holohan to discuss the fallout and plans to establish a better working relationship between Nphet and the Government.
Key to this will be more contact between Nphet and the Department of the Taoiseach before major decisions are made.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin was not informed Nphet was meeting on Sunday night, which was a serious concern to some in Government.
Mr Holohan was photographed walking into Government Buildings yesterday but the Government Information Service refused to say who he was meeting. It is believed Mr Fraser did not want his meeting with Mr Holohan confirmed to the media.
Mr Holohan is due to attend a meeting of senior officials at 9.30am today and it is understood he met Mr Fraser to clear the air ahead of this. Mr Martin is anxious to mend bridges between Government and public health officials after a tense meeting with Nphet officials in which the Coalition rejected recommendations for a lockdown.
After the meeting, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar launched an unprecedented attack on Nphet during an interview on RTÉ.
Mr Varadkar said Nphet, which is led by Mr Holohan, had “not thought through” the implications of the proposal for a so-called “circuit breaker” lockdown to quickly cut off the spread of the virus.
He suggested the team of public health experts were out of touch as none of them would be faced with becoming unemployed because of the restrictions they recommended.
In the Dáil, the Taoiseach was forced to defend his Coalition partner’s comments following criticism by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.
Ms McDonald said Mr Varadkar’s comments were “aggressive” and showed a lack of maturity.
She called on Mr Martin to explain why he rejected the public health advice, given concerns raised by Nphet about the lack of intensive care unit beds.
Mr Martin said he took its “advice seriously” and insisted he had “great respect” for Nphet and Mr Holohan.
“What must also be acknowledged, and I believe the CMO does, is simply that the impact of moving to Level 5 would have been severe on the lives of many people.
“I spoke to him before the Cabinet decision because it is not something I recommended to the Cabinet or that the Cabinet decided upon lightly as one wants a common approach to this,” he added.
Hours later, Mr Varadkar told a Fine Gael parliamentary meeting that a ‘circuit break’ lockdown cannot be ruled out.
He said it was inevitable that cases would rise for the next two to three weeks even under the current Level 3 restrictions, but that the country was not ready to return to lockdown, particularly as other countries in Europe had a higher incidence rate than Ireland.
He said the Government had made a tough call on Monday to reject Nphet’s recommendation for Level 5 restrictions.
Sources at the meeting said that twice Mr Varadkar did not rule out the possibility of the proposed ‘circuit break’ being introduced at some point to control the virus. But Mr Varadkar said this policy was not provided for in the Government’s ‘Living with Covid’ plan and the effects of implementing it now had not been thought through.
Government sources last night said they were committed to a gradual approach to introducing new restrictions and may return to imposing county-by-county measures in the coming weeks.