Separate briefings for top leaders wastes NPHET’s time – and bodes ill for Coalition
AT THE start of this year, few had ever heard of the National Public Health Emergency Team, or NPHET as we now know it all too well. Two chief medical officers, Dr Tony Holohan and Dr Ronan Glynn, have become instantly recognisable figures, the medical faces of the pandemic that struck so quickly and led to a national shutdown.
The workings of NPHET have been behind closed doors – we seldom hear the detail of how its decisions are arrived at, only the latest advice we have to follow. Today, though, this newspaper looks behind those closed doors and publishes an account of the fatigue and occasional discord among those in charge of public health during the pandemic.
In one piece, we report on divided opinion, especially among a (growing) minority who wonder if a herd immunity strategy is a better choice.
In another, Professor Peter Lunn, a behavioural scientist who is a member of the NPHET team, admits that the toll on our experts after six months of trying to outwit the virus means that they too are suffering the fatigue of working long hours with few breaks.
We separately report details about the ongoing frustrations within the committee as it interacts with Government. One source has told us that acting CMO Dr Glynn gives separate briefings to our leaders, first to
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, and then to Tánaiste and former taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
In a statement to the MoS, the Government confirmed this happens, saying: ‘Sometimes they are briefed together. Sometimes separately. It depends on diaries and availability.’
This detail tells us a lot about how the response to the pandemic has changed since the early days, under the caretaker government that enjoyed allparty support in the darkest days of illness and loss.
The idea that Dr Glynn needs to duplicate his briefing would seem to most reasonableminded people to be an unnecessary use of his time as the infection rate steadily rises.
While the public health aspect of the crisis should always be the prime focus, this double-up nonetheless calls into question an ongoing theme during the first few months of this grand coalition experiment – that of who is really in charge.
It is not the first time the Tánaiste seems to have forgotten that he does not yet occupy his former office. He has almost two years to wait for that, and while it is perfectly appropriate for the leader of the second main party in the Government to be briefed directly, many will wonder why this could not have been done as one briefing.
These separate briefings do not speak of a Government operating as a united entity.
The coming months are likely to be characterised by a spike in virus cases, a season of colds and flu, a struggling economy, and rolling lockdowns.
Our leaders need to put aside any party-political tensions, and unite to help us all through a likely infamous winter that will be remembered, for a litany of tragic reasons, for decades.