Politics is a three-card trick at the best of times. Roll up, roll up, find the lady. Or, in the case of the current lot, find the place where the buck stops. Oh ho! You think it’s here? Not this time, sorry. You think it’s there? Try again, champ. Roll up, roll up. Any other takers?
As a piece of political slipperiness, the Government's ability to be in charge of everything right now without being to blame for anything is almost admirable. The carry-on last week with the pubs and the keeping of receipts for 28 days was a classic of the genre. It was, said Stephen Donnelly, a measure aimed at a very small proportion of pubs who weren't playing by the rules and anyway, the rules wouldn't be in place for very much longer so it soon won't apply.
So there you have it. A country in the grip of a once-in-a-century health crisis, one already battening down the hatches for the imminent economic tornado and one which, at best, is crossing its fingers for the mental health implications of both combined, that country’s government is using its time to legislate for something that it claims isn’t happening to any great extent, while emphasising that said legislation will soon be null and void in any case.
The Government can pull this sort of nonsense because they walk with a shield in front of them. The quiet, unfussy medical people who head up Nphet have taken a disproportionate amount of blame for the nuttiest of the measures. The €9 meal wheeze in pubs was strictly a Government invention but you can be sure that if you stopped people in the street and asked, Nphet would get a significant portion of the blame.
Same with spectators going to sporting events. All around the country, sport is happening. WhatsApp groups are pinging away with reminders to get health questionnaires filled in ahead of training sessions, games are taking place in public parks and stadiums in every towns. Football, hurling, soccer, rugby, baseball, hockey. It is all happening and it is all helping. It is keeping people sane.
But nobody is allowed to go and watch because - and this can't be stressed enough - because the Government is preventing crowds of any number attending games. Micheál Martin, Leo Varadkar, Stephen Donnelly, the rest of the cabinet. It is their call and their call alone.
Again though, Nphet are getting the blame for this. You could only have sympathy for Dr Ronan Glynn on the Late Late Show on Friday night as he explained the rationale behind it all. There he was, a modest, conscientious medical man, waiting up until 11.30 on a Friday night at the end of a working week to go on TV and give cover to the decision politicians are making. You'd hope they were sitting at home and feeling some measure of shame that they weren't there doing it themselves.
Lose the people and you lose your authority
Glynn and Nphet wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t making recommendations. Currently their advice, at a time when cases are rising, is to prevent congregation at sporting events and have them played behind closed doors. But that’s all they can do. They advise, they don’t instruct. Nobody elected them to anything. The idea that Nphet are to blame for you not being able to go see your team play in a county final is a convenient fiction.
Martin and his Government could quash it in a nanosecond if they so wished. Instead, they play on it and allow the impression to go abroad that their hands are tied. Martin implied that he didn’t even know the previous limit of 200 at games included the teams and officials. It’s hard to know which would be more dispiriting on that score - that he did know and was lying or that he didn’t and was genuinely in the dark. One way or the other, it was extremely telling.
Here’s the thing. On any brass tacks reading of things, getting people into grounds for sporting events very obviously doesn’t matter. Even the most goggle-eyed sports fan understands there are more pressing priorities. If you haven’t been into Dublin city centre in the past six months, for instance, you would be genuinely shocked to walk around it now. Injecting the life and people and boldness that drives a city back into it will take years.
That’s the sort of gargantuan task that a government ought to be facing questions on. Stupid, picayune little things like meals in pubs and people at matches should have long since been out of the way by now. They take up airtime because people don’t buy the thinking behind them. Lose the people and you lose your authority.
This is going to come to a head now, particularly as we try to squeeze a year’s sport into the next three months. It will start with county finals, the Pro14, the inter-county scene, all the way up to internationals in soccer and rugby. The contrast between the wide open spaces of stadiums with no fans in them and the pubs into which those fans will instead pour to watch the games will be stark.
You alienate those you treat as fools. Everybody’s behaviour has changed in the past six months. Mask-wearing is at 90 per cent in the general populace, 97 per cent among young people. We socially distance, we wash our hands, we don’t see anywhere close to the amount of people we used to. Everyone’s lives have become smaller, tighter, more concentrated. Most of all, everyone is more careful of their interactions.
Micheál Martin could decide this morning to loosen regulations and allow crowds of 200, even 400, go to games this weekend. He could issue guidelines and people would follow them. Remember, it would have sounded completely daft in February to be told you had to buy a ticket for a junior championship match, that you had to buy it online, that you had to enter through a specific gate and exit through another, that you had to wear a mask and you had to sanitise your hands as you went. People would do all that now without a second thought. They would think anything less would be weird.
The Government could recognise that people have changed their behaviours and use outdoor sporting events to show a way forward for society. Instead, they hide behind Nphet.
It is a cowardly way to lead.
