There was enough blame to go around for everyone, and there was finger pointing aplenty.
Fine Gael blamed Fianna Fáil (of course). Fianna Fáil blamed the Opposition. Officials blamed the media. Those at the centre of Government blamed the Department of Health. The Department of Health blamed the centre. And so on it went.
Tuesday’s launch of the new plan for managing the pandemic for the next six months was widely acknowledged to be a disaster inside and outside Government yesterday. Insiders cited a bumpy press conference, a tetchy Dáil outing and a few flaky interviews (Leo Varadkar’s on Prime Time was a notable exception, Fine Gaelers insisted), before the whole thing collapsed into farce when the Ceann Comhairle declared the Dáil was adjourned for a week and that Ministers had gone into self-isolation (it wasn’t; they hadn’t). Not a good day, you might say.
Fianna Fáil loyalists were grim-faced, but keen to get over it. “Look, we just have to get better at this,” one TD said. “Move on.” The not-so-loyalists were not so keen to get over it. They contrasted the halting interview given by the Taoiseach on Six-One to the more assured Varadkar one later that evening.
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Fine Gaelers threw their eyes up to heaven at the latest imbroglio. Many of them would be lying if they said they weren’t enjoying the frequently made contrast between their handling of the early phase of the pandemic and the stewardship of the Fianna Fáil Taoiseach and the Fianna Fáil Minister for Health. But the more thoughtful Fine Gaelers realise that a worsening pandemic will do them no favours in the long run. They also know that a few weeks ago their leader was privately urging a faster opening up of the country – a position that looks decidedly unwise now.
Cooler heads (there are some) around Government know that while the events of Tuesday were damaging to the credibility of the administration, and credibility is vital, what is more important is that the measures introduced to control the spread of the virus are effective.
But they also know that the Government has to get much better at managing its own processes and messages. According to several sources familiar with the events of recent days, there has been a lack of internal communication and collaboration which resulted in Ministers and the Taoiseach being ill-prepared for the launch and subsequent media outings. Some of this is related to the sometimes still uneasy relationship between the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, but it also reflects a stuttering centre of Government.
“Things changing all the time, nobody being informed, stuff done at the last minute, things appearing on Cabinet memos at the last minute . . . and we have a massive problem with our comms,” complained one source.
Others were critical of the performance of Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, and cut him little slack for feeling unwell. “It’s just not acceptable,” the source said. “Anyway, he shouldn’t have been at work, he was symptomatic and obviously so.” Two people who attended meetings with him in recent days said he was clearly coming down with at least a cold. “Spluttering,” was the word one used.
But there were also obvious and foreseeable problems with the messages drawn from the five-level Living with Covid-19 document. Dublin being at “Level 2½” might not have been a problem if it was admitted and defended up front, but it wasn’t. Martin tut-tutted away questions about Christmas. But everyone is talking about Christmas. It’s clear now that the advice not to travel from Dublin should have been issued last week, when the National Public Health Emergency Team first recommended it. “Pretty costly,” complains one insider.
But in fairness to Donnelly – or at least in mitigation – the document was put together and prepared not by him and his staff, but by senior officials in the Department of the Taoiseach. Donnelly had reservations about it, telling a meeting of the Cabinet committee on Covid-19 last week it needed to be simplified. Well, they didn’t simplify it enough.
The danger now, according to two experienced people on both sides of the administration, is that a siege mentality develops – that the Government doesn’t get better at communicating, it retreats into itself, and gets worse. As Dublin teeters on the brink of further restrictions, that would make the tasks ahead even harder to manage.
