Stormont’s political fragility and fractured relationships between rival parties hampered Northern Ireland’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, a public inquiry has heard.
On the opening day of the hearing in Belfast on Tuesday – the final stage of the UK-wide inquiry into the pandemic – Clair Dobbin KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, referred to the “precariousness” of the North’s powersharing executive, which was restored just two months before the March 2020 outbreak following a three-year hiatus.
She said there was a “legacy of mistrust” between Sinn Féin and the DUP, and pointed to evidence that by autumn of 2020, decision making by ministers had “started to fracture along political lines”.
Comments made by the then Stormont health minister, Robin Swann, who said the “pre-existing fragilities in our system also undoubtedly hampered our response” in April 2021, were referenced in Ms Dobbin’s opening statement.
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Ms Dobbin cautioned that the three-week hearing would not be “a carte blanche for a blame game” but would instead provide an “opportunity for candour” among those politicians who oversaw the devolved government’s response.
Members of a campaign group representing bereaved families packed into the main hearing room and some wept as a harrowing 20-minute film featuring first-hand testimonies was screened as the inquiry started. Wearing red T-shirts, they held photographs of their relatives.
The hearing was told that latest statistics show an estimated 4,075 excess deaths were recorded from March 1st, 2020, to the end of 2022, and 5,060 Covid-related deaths, which Ms Dobbin described as a “bleak tally of life lost during the pandemic”.
Noting Northern Ireland’s “distinct” geographical and legal status compared with the “rest of the United Kingdom”, she said Stormont ministers had to “negotiate relationships with both Westminster and the Republic of Ireland”.
“The sharing of a permeable border with the Republic of Ireland meant that in terms of epidemiology, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, were a single epidemiological unit. But constitutionally and legally they were not,” she said.
Inquiry chair Baroness Hallett said the initial hearings would focus on key political decision-making.
Stormont’s Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who held the post of deputy first minister during the pandemic, former DUP first minister Arlene Foster and current DUP Assembly Speaker Edwin Poots are among the politicians expected to appear.
One of the most controversial events which took place during the period of lockdown restrictions was the funeral of veteran republican Bobby Storey in June 2020. Ms O’Neill and the then Sinn Féin Stormont finance minister, Conor Murphy, were among those who attended the funeral, with hundreds lining the route in west Belfast. Their attendance sparked a huge political row, with Ms Foster calling for Ms O’Neill to step aside while a police investigation took place.
Ms O’Neill insisted at the time that she had obeyed social distancing regulations and had done nothing wrong. The Public Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute anyone.
Ms Dobbin said the incident “was to prove damaging to executive committee relations”.
“Was damage done to public confidence as a result?” she asked.
A legal representative for Northern Ireland Covid Bereaved Families for Justice told the inquiry that the “hurtful and premeditated decision of senior Sinn Féin members of the executive to attend a large-scale funeral gathering” took place at a time when “people were being denied that basic and emotive right by executive decisions that they [Sinn Féin] had been at the heart of making”.
Peter Wilcock KC read aloud a message written by the North’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride, about their attendance. “Disgraceful, they should hang their heads in shame,” it read.
During the sitting, details about deleted WhatsApp messages on senior politicians’ phones were also outlined. The inquiry had sought the “extremely important” messages. All Stormont permanent secretaries were told to ensure that all messages and key documents were not deleted “at an early stage” in the inquiry.
Ms Dobbins told the hearing that the First and Deputy First Ministers’ office did not receive this message from the inquiry – and that Ms Foster’s work phone was handed back to the Executive Office (TEO) but was “reset and wiped”. Ms O’Neill’s phone was also subsequently wiped by TEO’s IT department. Messages on work devices of Mr Swann were not affected as his laptop was kept in a secure space.
The inquiry said the development raised questions for the NI civil service chief, Jayne Brady. Mr Wilcock told said the emergence of the deleted WhatsApp messages was a “sorry revelation” that brought more hurt to bereaved families.
Among the other witnesses to give evidence on Tuesday was Nuala Toman from Disability Action Northern Ireland, who described how disabled people became “invisible” during the pandemic in terms of political decision-making.
Ms Toman said that data was not available on the number of disabled people who died with Covid until late 2021. This showed that disabled people accounted for a “disproportionate” number of deaths, the inquiry was told.
The hearing continues.
