IRELAND’S COVID INQUIRY will not resemble the drama that has been playing out on TV stations in the UK, according to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. 

The terms of reference for the country’s inquiry into the response to the pandemic have been much delayed. 

They were due to come before Cabinet before Christmas, however Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirmed this week that this will be delayed until the new year. 

“We have the draft terms of reference for the inquiry ready now,” Varadkar said on Monday last.

“We have committed to consulting with the opposition before bringing the terms of reference to Cabinet and just with so many unpredicted events happening in the last couple of weeks, we haven’t been able to schedule that at a time that works for everyone.

“So it’ll be the New Year before that goes to Cabinet now but the inquiry will certainly be up and running in 2024 and you can be sure of that,” he said. 

The spotlight in the UK has been placed on disagreements between politicians and health officials during that time, with much of the focus on back and forths that played out over text messages.

Donnelly said Ireland’s handling of the crisis was fundamentally different. When asked by The Journal if he is fearful it will be the same tone as the UK inquiry, the health minister said:

“No, I know it isn’t. I mean, I’m part of it. I lived through it. I know it’s not going to be like the UK one.”

WhatsApp interactions and text messages have been a key component to the UK inquiry and have captured the public’s attention.

Does the minister think that difficult conversations might be on the cards if such interactions surface in Ireland’s inquiry?

Responding with laughter, Donnelly said “based on the reaction we got to a thumbs up emoji during Covid? Who knows?”. He went on to say he was not fearful of suffering a similar fate as his counterparts in the UK.

Much was written about the thumbs up emoji that the minister sent to the then Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, in October 2020.

Holohan had texted Donnelly to say that the number of Covid-19 cases in Dublin was on the rise, texting the minister that the ‘R’ number in Dublin had increased. Donnelly replied with a single thumbs-up emoji. Commentary at the time noted that the minister’s response could have been regarded as something of a passive-aggressive move. 

Donnelly said the conflicts and tensions that were going on in the background for his UK counterparts are playing out now, but as “one of the central people involved in Ireland’s Covid response”, Donnelly said it was not like that in Ireland.

“It was not like that, you know, it doesn’t mean that everyone agreed with each other all the time. But it was a it was a collaborative process. There were tensions, of course, there were disagreements, of course there were. But, you know, our response was fundamentally different.

“Our response was a public health led response. We backed the public health advice most of the time, not all of the time, because there are other considerations. There was a close working relationship between government ministers and civil servants and the HSE. Again, not perfect. But broadly, we all worked well together,” he said.

The health minister also cited a recent OECD paper published two weeks ago on excess mortality during Covid, which spans over three years, therefore including things like delayed care or missed diagnosis.

Ireland has the fourth lowest excess mortality rate in the world.

“Ireland’s response, according to the OECD, was one of the most effective. So that’s a different context, I think, to the UK,” he said.

Asked at a press conference at Government Buildings this week about how Ireland should approach its Covid-19 inquiry, Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme said:

“I don’t presume to tell the Irish government how it should run its business, particularly when it comes to reviewing performance in an emergency response.”

Dr Ryan said there was “coherent leadership” from Ireland during the pandemic and that science was “driving the car”, which he said was not the case in all other countries.