Conor Skehan

Careful route to recovery will serve us best

THE Roadmap for Reopening Society and Business contains everything that a recovery plan should have — not just in terms of actions, but more deeply in terms of values. It is a practical, undemonstrative document of who we are and what we value — all practical prose, no patriotic poetry.

It is striking to see how at the outset it sets out core concepts for us all — first describing what we can each do, before then setting out what we can do together. This is proper nation-building stuff. And it’s reality, not rhetoric — as the outstanding solidarity and compliance of the past weeks have demonstrated.

The other important signal is that every stage is a mixture of business and social steps. Both accorded equal priority.

The other important thing to note about the document is the balance between expertise and politics. Communicating openly and acting together are cited as being the key principles. Open, honest official communications have been the hallmark of this crisis and the roadmap document itself is clearly the result of extensive reaching out to get advice and acceptance from many different economic and social groups.

Last week’s opinion polls about the handling of this crisis were very favourable. However, this is no time for complacency because the Government is entering the most difficult and dangerous phase of this crisis.

An impatient country, goaded by increasingly vocal vested interests — not to mention the lure of being out in better weather — will quickly forget these achievements and will increasingly resent restrictions and those who impose them. We should expect early and vocal ‘‘me-too’’ calls from sectors, criticising their place in the sequence of this roadmap.

The proposed slow and careful approach will quickly become difficult in the face of waves of ‘‘experts’’ — each with their own morsel of certainty — claiming to know how and when to end restrictions.

Ten thousand letters were mentioned in the Taoiseach’s speech. This is an important reminder of how this crisis has, again, shown up the role of communications. There has been wave after wave of misinformation thrown about and the Government has stepped up to forcefully refute it.

However, we are now entering the realms where medical evidence begins to mix with economic and social opinions. This is fertile ground for that cohort of online activists who have so strongly and disproportionately distorted public debate over the last few years. That tiny band measured in a few hundred, consisting of a recurrent set of people angrily venting about the widest range of issues. Always trying to stand out or stand up — but standing for nothing in reality — a drop in the ocean compared to the 10,000 who took the trouble to share their feelings with the Taoiseach.

In all this planning, it is important to remember that our ignorance remains the only certainty. After four months we still do not understand Covid-19 transmission, immunity, or re-infection. The roadmap must be tentative — as it is.

The reality is that this crisis is unprecedented. The reality is that nobody, anywhere in the world, knows what do. The UK and US, who we are accustomed to following, are emerging as among the least competent examples. We are lost without a map.

Navigation training always begins with the fundamental advice that the key is to admit being lost. ‘‘I don’t know’’ are the wisest words that a true leader can utter in a crisis. It means being unafraid of being taken for a fool.

Military training courses place great emphasis on navigation as a way of developing leadership skills by teaching a series of steps for how to lead when lost.

In this crisis we first need to resist those who want us to needlessly act quickly and decisively. The first step, when lost, is to not panic and slow down. Panic always results in haste which usually makes matters worse. The slow, staged, phased roadmap addresses this by providing certainty.

Leadership is the next step when a group is lost. This is where a democracy is fundamentally different from the military and much more difficult, because everyone ranging from the expert to the doubter must be accommodated.

Real leaders are those who are unafraid to take unpopular decisions. There are many voices in a crisis — the most dangerous of whom are the populists who promise the easiest solution.

The mere existence of a plan — and especially such a detailed plan — is the essence of leadership.

Having courage, one of the hallmarks of leadership, is the third step when lost. Being unafraid to turn back takes the most courage.

Many are surprised to learn that, in a navigation crisis, the best way forward is to look backwards — to remember where you came from. The roadmap exemplifies this by incorporating mechanisms to turn back if any of the stages fail.

The media is full of calls by a rising tide of opportunists who want to use this crisis as a way

to change everything, to make the world a better place — according to their new values.

We require the opposite, which the roadmap supplies in spades by its concentration on the recovery of the most ordinary activities — work, schools, shops and transport. ‘‘Improvers’’ need to be recognised as shameless opportunists taking advantage of a crisis — like ideological black marketeers who thrive on misfortune.

Humility is the last technique of navigation recovery. The roadmap also does this by proposing progress only by little steps in the right direction — to give confidence and hope — while retaining the ability to retreat if proven wrong. Gradualism is key, we need to make haste slowly.

The nub of the emerging challenge of the Government is the wrongness of crowds — there is no wisdom in consensus. There is no democracy in science, you can’t vote away an unpopular fact, but feelings are facts too.

Politics fail when the gap between public opinion and policy grows too wide.

Around the world the language of ‘‘victory’’ is growing louder. A race is beginning to see who can open first and most, in a race to put profit before people.

We now have our race plan — it’s not a sprint, but it’s not a marathon any more.

The layout of the roadmap document says a lot about our values and priorities. It begins by laying out the detailed measure for each phase in terms of community health, education and childcare as well as health and social care services.

The plan only turns to economic activity (work), retail, personal services and commercial activities once these are in place. These are the priorities of a nation that puts people before profit — literally. Left-wing populists will have to reflect on the relevance of their dog-eared slogans now.

What will success look like? To be proud of being one of the last to leave lockdown — not one of the first.

In this race the winners will be those who locked down last — because they were the ones who cared about the people the most.

‘There are many voices in a crisis — the most dangerous are the populists who promise the easiest solution’