Last Saturday there were intensive discussions at the highest level about whether the country’s anti-coronavirus measures should be raised to Level 5. So far as I can see, every single person involved in those discussions was male. There were six members of the Government – the three party leaders plus Paschal Donohoe, Michael McGrath and Stephen Donnelly.
They were briefed by four men: Dr Tony Holohan, Dr Ronan Glynn, Prof Philip Nolan and Paul Reid. I assume the secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach and chair of the Covid-19 oversight group, Martin Fraser, was also heavily involved. So 11 people were engaged in making a crucial decision for Irish society and not one of them is a woman.
It is not the job of Nphet or of the Expert Advisory Group to make decisions. That's the Government's job
Hospital Report
In itself, this is breathtaking. There are plenty of women with vast expertise and experience. Dr Eibhlin Connolly is deputy chief medical officer. Dr Lorraine Doherty is national clinical director for health protection. Cliona O’Farrelly is professor of comparative immunology at TCD. Prof Molly Byrne of NUIG is one of the State’s foremost experts on behavioural psychology. I could list a dozen more women – all of them readily available to the Government and already fully up to speed on the pandemic as members of advisory subgroups.
Absence of women
But even if we leave aside the larger questions of institutional sexism, the absence of women in making decisions of such profound consequence points to a wider problem. The State has failed to develop an appropriate system of pandemic governance. This has been obvious since spring. Yet here we are, facing into winter, with essentially the same ad hoc arrangements for managing the crisis that were thrown together in panic when it began.
A small window into the problem was opened on Thursday. Tánaiste Leo Varadkar was answering a question in the Dáil about why Ireland is not using the rapid and cheap antigen tests that are being very widely deployed in countries such as Germany and Denmark: "I understand Nphet and the advisory committee are giving it consideration and have yet to come to a decision as to whether they believe antigen testing has a role to play in Ireland. I will, however, encourage them to make that decision as quickly as possible. Decisions were made slowly on face coverings. They should not be made slowly on this."
Decisions
The key word here is “decisions”. It is not the job of Nphet or of the Expert Advisory Group to make decisions. That’s the Government’s job – the experts advise and recommend, the Government chooses. So why is the Tánaiste claiming that these bodies decide policy?
Somebody, somewhere, acted too slowly but who that might be is a mystery
For the answer, look at his weasly aside about the inexplicably tardy move to make face masks a major part of public health protection: “Decisions were made slowly.” Ah, the evasive politician’s best friend, the passive voice. Who was taoiseach at the time? Leo Varadkar. What did he do about Ireland’s obvious failure to follow best international practice? Somebody, somewhere, acted too slowly but who that might be is a mystery.
There's an even odder twist in this whole chaotic story of pandemic governance. Since last April, I've been raising in these columns a very basic question: what happened to the National Emergency Co-ordination Group (NECG)? This is the structure for dealing with national emergencies that was painstakingly created and formally adopted by Varadkar's government in July 2017. It was the State's system for dealing with emergencies including, explicitly, with "the potential widespread impact of a pandemic". It was tried and tested in storms and floods. Every government department and State agency was ready for the NECG to be activated. Nothing happened.
‘Baffling’
On April 28th, I described as “baffling” the decision to ditch all of this preparation and go instead with an ad hoc system that “evades the mechanisms for co-ordination, transparency and ministerial accountability so carefully established in 2017” and “creates tunnel vision”.
And then last week I open my Irish Times and there is a fine oped piece headlined: “It’s time for the National Emergency Co-ordination Group to step in.” It makes all the same arguments I had made in April.
But, staggeringly, it was written by Eoghan Murphy, a member of the very government that ditched the NECG when the pandemic struck. If only we had the NECG in operation, he wrote, we would have "no more silos; no sector left outside; no space for public misunderstandings". In other words, wouldn't it be nice if somebody, somewhere, hadn't created a system that features all of those things?
Public misunderstandings
Eoghan Murphy is very close to Leo Varadkar. Does the Tánaiste agree with him? If not, why not? If so, why on earth did he put the carefully constructed plan in a drawer back in March? Why do we now have so many public misunderstandings between Ministers and their public health advisers? Why have we ended up, not just with “sectors” left outside the room but with a whole gender?
In the midst of a crisis that is getting worse, we are bumbling along with a system that is too narrow to include the necessary range of views and experiences in the making of momentous decisions, yet too unfocused to produce the necessary clarity, confidence or speed.