Ministers in Northern Ireland did not seriously consider closing schools due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic until the Republic of Ireland did so, a public inquiry has heard.
This and other key decisions became “political and divisive” issues, with ministers at the time split over whether to follow Dublin or London’s lead according to their own national identity.
A number of former ministers appeared on Wednesday before the UK-wide inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic, which began hearing evidence in Belfast last week.
Among them was Sinn Féin Assembly member Carál Ní Chuilín, the former minister for communities, who apologised for attending the funeral of senior republican Bobby Storey in Belfast when Covid-19 restrictions were in place.
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“I am very sorry. I absolutely do see the impact and I also recognise that people were more than angry,” she said, adding she now accepted she should not have attended the funeral.
[ Decision not to prosecute Sinn Féin figures over funeral attendance upheldOpens in new window ]
The former DUP MLA Peter Weir, who was minister for education in Northern Ireland at the outbreak of the pandemic, was questioned on the decision to close schools in March 2020.
The “pivotal point where it became a very strong possibility” was about March 12th, 2020, when schools south of the Border were closed, Mr Weir said.
He said that in the North, “We weren’t really given a heads up that that was going to happen – I think I learned about it effectively during a school visit on March 12th.”
Asked by the lead counsel for the inquiry, Clair Dobbin KC, why the position in Northern Ireland was different from that in the Republic, he said: “I don’t think they gave us particular clarity”, and there was “probably a limited amount of direct understanding” as to why schools in the Republic had closed.
“I don’t think that we got or received any particular granular information from the Republic as to why they’d taken that position,” he said.
The former minister said “the feeling was that we had to do whatever was in the best interest of Northern Ireland and most appropriate to our circumstances, which weren’t always in sync with what happened in other jurisdictions. Ultimately, we had to make a decision for ourselves.”
Handwritten notes from a meeting of ministers on March 16th, 2020, which were shown to the inquiry, revealed concerns about mixed messaging and disputes within the Executive being played out in the media.
Ministers should “not be out shouting”, the then DUP first minister Arlene Foster was recorded as saying.
Mr Weir agreed with Ms Dobbin that the question of school closures had created “a level of division within the Executive”, and that this was a “regret”.
He said “particularly Sinn Féin ministers and the SDLP minister… at least had one eye towards what was happening in the Republic, and that, if you like, Ireland as a whole should take a view, and that was part of a political or constitutional point of view”.
The former minister added that he also “suspected” there may have been a “particular level of antipathy” from those ministers towards the UK’s Conservative government, led by Boris Johnson.
“Not only did they want to follow the Republic, but they had a natural inclination not to, sort of, follow what was happening from London,” he said.
There had been a “particular level of friction around communication”, he added, because the Executive had taken a collective position, but within 24 hours the then deputy first minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, said in a media interview that her party’s position was that schools should close.
Schools in Northern Ireland closed on March 18th following a decision taken by the UK prime minister.
Asked by Ms Dobbin what had changed, Mr Weir said the medical advice had changed and financial support at a UK-wide level had made it “practical and plausible”.
Mr Weir was also questioned at the hearing about tensions within the Executive in November 2020, when there was disagreement among ministers about extending lockdown measures to tackle a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
He defended the DUP’s use of a cross-community vote mechanism to effectively veto the proposals, saying a “level of frustration” had built up, because case numbers were not improving.
Ms Dobbin put it to him that “there was only one community in Northern Ireland for the purposes of the pandemic. Do you agree with that?”
“I agree for everything there is only one [community], we are all ultimately human beings, whether that’s the pandemic or anything else,” Mr Weir replied, adding that the purpose of the cross-community vote was “to try and ensure decisions had a wide buy-in”.
Mr Weir said that in his opinion, the controversy over the attendance of high-profile members of Sinn Féin, including Ms O’Neill, at Mr Storey’s funeral “probably had a much greater level of impact on public confidence than the events of November”.
However, he said, those days in November 2020 had been “a very difficult period” and “not the brightest hour in the Executive’s handling of things. I wish it hadn’t developed the way it had,” he said.
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