Gript Editor and political commentator John McGuirk has lambasted the Irish Government’s latest handling of the COVID crisis, as a new wave of restrictions came into force this week. Mr McGuirk said that the Government’s response to COVID is now “one of the biggest public policy failures in the history of the State.”
Mr McGuirk was speaking on Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder programme on Wednesday evening. He said that there is “absolutely no evidence” that NPHET of the Irish Government have “any interest in engaging in best practice internationally” when it comes to handling COVID-19.
He told programme host Kieran Cuddihy: “I think Kieran we are now talking about one of the biggest public policy failures in the history of the State.”
“It has been two years. We have spent €40bn. We did €9 meals. We did mandatory quarantine. We closed schools. We shuttered businesses. We basically told people to sacrifice and winter it out so that we could summer ahead – just last winter if you remember that,” he added.
His comments came after the Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan told the same radio programme that 4,000 COVID patients could be hospitalised next month – with up to 200,000 people picking up the virus. Mr McGuirk, however, questioned Mr Holohan’s model, stating that he didn’t understand how the figures added up, especially in light of lower case numbers in the UK – which, in stark contrast to Ireland – has scrapped all restrictions.
“Tony Holohan was on your programme and he was talking about his model – the NPHET model which projects 5,000 cases a day at peak in December,” Mr McGurk said.
“Now, the UK – our nearest neighbour, which has no restrictions of any kind at all – had this wave when they reopened. They peaked at 38,000 cases daily which is one case for every 1,390 in the UK.
“The NPHET model projects that Ireland – this is their most optimistic model, remember – will have one case for every 990 patients. So, apparently the virus – even with restrictions according to NPHET – is going to be 30% to 40% worse in Ireland than England.
“Now, I don’t understand how they get that figure and it is notable because earlier this summer, the reason we stayed closed when England opened up is because NPHET produced models which said cases were going to peak at about 70,000 total cases, or something like that, in early September.”
He said the Irish people are now being asked to accept restrictions based on models that “makes no intuitive sense to anyone who looks at the figures anywhere else in the world.”
“Those models were – and I hesitate to use this word but it’s the only word for it – they were garbage. We didn’t come within a donkey’s roar of hitting those numbers,” he said.
“And once again we’re being presented with this model, despite the fact that the last model was wrong and makes no intuitive sense to anybody who can look at the figures anywhere else in the world, and we’re being told that, as a result of that, we have to wear masks indefinitely, and non-pharmaceutical interventions indefinitely, and businesses are going to have to stay closed indefinitely.”
Mr McGuirk said it must be asked how British Prime Minister Boris Johnson can get his country back functioning normally, yet Irish leadership cannot, despite a mammoth multi-billion-euro bill and endless resources.
“So, my question, really, for Tony Holohan is this: How is it that Boris Johnson of all people – Boris Johnson, not exactly anybody’s idea I think in this country of a great leader – can open his country fully and normally but our people in charge after two years, €40bn and endless resources cannot?”
Mr McGuirk also said that responsibility must be taken for the lack of capacity in the health system – noting that the OECD has warned that Ireland spends more per person on health than any other country in the OECD bar one but has the fourth fewest number of hospital beds.
He said that this shortage is “as a result of successive Government being so incompetent that it is almost beyond description”.
Mr McGuirk also questioned “how you can spend that much and have a health system that is unable to withstand what is a normal enough winter surge,” adding that “people seem to have forgotten that this is not a COVID story. This has happened every year of my adult lifetime, Kieran, and every year of your adult lifetime, and every year of every listener’s adult lifetime.”
He also said that the repeated extension of the Emergency Powers Act showed that the Government “still thinks we’re in an emergency” but that their actions show they feel “they have no duty apparently to solve it any more”.
“The only people who are asked to solve it are the public, are the nightclub owners. You and I are lucky, Kieran, that we don’t make our living in hospitality. Imagine you were somebody who is a nightclub owner who, just last week was told, ‘Oh, you have to have ticketing facilities.”
“They’ve invested money in making their clubs and places compliant with what the Government said last week, then on Monday, Darragh O’Brien, the Housing Minister, said 31 hours before restrictions were announced, there will be no new restrictions – and then yesterday they’re told ‘Sorry guys, you have to effectively close, but the way, we haven’t got the courage to say ‘close,’ we’re just going to shut your doors at 12 o’clock, which effectively closes you down. It’s a disgrace.”