Alice, of Wonderland fame, said she could imagine six impossible things before breakfast. Leo Varadkar can imagine at least one when he finds himself in a tight corner even if the ‘corner’ in question is an outdoor dining area of a plush Dublin hotel. It certainly took some imagination, as well as chutzpah, to scramble together an escape strategy from the rabbit hole that was Katherine Zappone’s Merrion party.
To summon no less a person than the Attorney General to vouch for his fantastical claims makes them if anything less credible. Really, are we expected to believe that the government guidelines and regulations for citizens on something as vital as covid prevention could be so abstruse and opaque that no less a person than the AG himself was needed to clarify them for the government who framed them ?
It’s a wonder he didn’t get his medical experts to back him up as well. He might have asked Dr Holohan to explain ‘the science’ behind the view that covid has low transmissibility when the gathering is made up of politicians and former politicians rather than First Communion and wedding parties which ‘put lives at risk’ according to Donnelly.
Anyway, it should be quite straightforward to convey that you can gather for outdoor dining as a group of up to 200, or in certain cases 500, or you cannot? Many brides and grooms will be surprised, putting it mildly, to learn that if only they had the inspiration to run government covid rules by a legal expert, they could have enjoyed a wonderful outdoor wedding bash with as many guests as they would probably wish for during the recent weeks of heatwave. It couldn’t be booked as a wedding event per se but it could be booked nevertheless. Outdoors in Ireland would be an open sided marquee or courtyard with umbrella covered tables for six such as the Merrion Hotel provided for Katherine Zappone and her privileged circle in early July. What an occasion they could have had if only Leo and Katherine’s bash had taken place sooner? Or just imagine you were a family with a First Communion child and you now realise that a celebration with up to 200 guests outdoors would have been within the rules after all ? I would say there are numerous people all over the country fairly livid right now when they think of how they were mis-sold the government’s rules.
How could everyone have so misunderstood government regulations? A more pertinent question is why the government apparently did not understand the latitude and implications of their own rules until they stress tested them for themselves, as it were? Yet another question is why did the hard pressed hospitality industry misunderstand the rules to their very considerable cost and loss ? Usually if there is any latitude in interpretation, people tend to find it when it is in their own interest.
Failte Ireland and The Irish Hotel Federation, who had been lobbying the government so hard to ease the restrictions, apparently got it all wrong. Odder still, the government was apparently unable or unwilling to clarify the freedoms they already enjoyed under the rules. You would think while the hoteliers were arguing their case and moaning about the 50 person limit and the ban on group bookings that someone on the government side would have said, ‘ hey, it’s not like that, you can actually have 200 guests as long as they are outdoors’
Of course that speculation is based on the retro-fitting of the rules to accommodate the Merrion St bash. That was not their point and purpose up to last week. That was not what NPHET and Dr Holohan intended. The rules for gathering outdoors for 200 people did not envisage them drinking and dining together without masks. The rules were different where food and drink were concerned because the risks were different. Everyone knew that. That was understood by the industry sectors involved as it was by every bride and groom,every family celebrating a significant anniversary, every priest postposing yet again the dates for Communions and Confirmation. In other words, the dogs in the street understood the rules, or at least believed they did and were led to believe they did. I will wager that the fat cats were pretty sure of the rules too and held the same understanding of them as the street dogs until they were caught red-handed breaching them.
Then they started to mine the texts of their own rules for an escape route and with the help of the AG seem to have found a welcome light at the end of the tunnel. It is possible they may have where letter and law is concerned but it doesn’t stand up because they presided for too long over everyone else following a very different interpretation of the same letters and law. It simply won’t wash. A sleight of hand is a sleight of hand whether in magic or law. You recognise it even when you can’t quite figure it out. Everyone knows Leo hasn’t pulled this rabbit out of the hat no matter how hard he tries to bamboozle us.
If Leo and Stephen Donnelly and Michael Martin weren’t so very heavy -handed in berating priests who wanted to administer sacraments to their flock within the rules because of the risk posed by social gatherings, if they weren’t so reluctant to loosen restrictions for the hospitality sector, if they didn’t make such a big deal of allowing wedding couples to have more than 50 guests, their protestations now might be less fantastical.
As things stand, Leo’s tale is about as credible as Alice’s. We have been taken for fools by our government. Whether we are or not will show in what happens next.