We’ll stipulate right at the beginning that it is the editorial position of this publication that no lockdowns whatsoever should be enacted, moving forward, and that the existing restrictions, along with the absurd “emergency powers” that the Government retains, should be abolished. That’s what the Editorial team here at Gript would do, were we in power. But we are not in power, and have no intention of seeking it.
The people who are in power may well take a different view. NPHET, for a fact, take a different view. Only two mornings ago, Dr. Holohan was on the airwaves, warning people that more restrictions might be necessary. Then, yesterday, Eamon Ryan was telling reporters that no further restrictions were on the horizon. Any smart observer, however, will note that on almost every occasion when NPHET and Government have clashed, NPHET’s view has prevailed. Maybe not totally, but, when they ask for new restrictions, they tend to get some kind of new restriction.
So, the question is this: How is any business, or any person, expected to plan their operations in the run in to Christmas? Christmas is traditionally the busiest season for hospitality. Supply chains do not work on a short term basis: If you eat in a restaurant during Christmas week, the food you get on your plate will have been ordered, usually, weeks in advance. The same is true of retail outlets, pubs, and other businesses. Ordering in supplies that you are, at a later date, banned from selling, would be a disaster.
Already, whatsapp groups around the country are filled with (what we understand to be baseless) rumours of further restrictions being announced on December 6th, or 13th. Logically, that makes no sense: Government have never been so well organised as to plan these things in advance. When new restrictions are enacted, traditionally it involves a meeting of NPHET, and a letter leaked to the media at the last minute, before a frantic cabinet meeting to figure it all out. There is no reason to suspect the whatsapp rumours are true.
What they are, though, is a symptom.
The messaging between NPHET and the Government is so farcical, and so contradictory, that no member of the public really knows what to expect. No business knows what to expect. And in business, certainty is important. So important, in fact, that we once spent billions in the name of preserving it:
Old enough to remember how we had to bail out private bank bondholders because of the need for certainty & stability. Irish small business, pub, restaurant and hotel owners apparently don't make the grade for needing certainty. Who would invest in any such enterprise now?
— Declan Ganley (@declanganley) November 22, 2021
Throughout the pandemic, the Government have been caught napping, time and time again. Pursuing a policy until circumstances force them to change it. That is also what is happening now. Nobody could honestly look at the Irish state and say that there is a “plan” to suppress covid case numbers in the run in to Christmas. What there is, in effect, amounts to hope that it will get better on its own, and a reservation of the right to act later if it does not get better on its own. The arbiter of whether it gets better will not be Government, but NPHET.
As a result, uncertainty and panic is natural. People are driven to look at the daily case numbers not primarily to see the spread of the disease, but to use them as a way to divine what NPHET and Government might do next. Are cases up? Maybe we won’t make that big order. Are they down? Maybe it is safe to book that work dinner in December. Daily case numbers are a better guide, for the average person, to what the Government might do next week than what the Government says it might do next week is. Plans they announced last week can get thrown in the bin, if Ministers get spooked by Claire Byrne’s tone on the radio.
Whatever your views on lockdowns, vaccines, or anything else, this kind of drift is a catastrophe. Because it reveals that there is no plan to ever return fully to normal life. The Government, alone amongst English speaking countries, is at the mercy of the virus.
This is not true, even in countries that are pursuing abominable policies. Say what you will about Australia, but it has a plan, and it is sticking to it. Say what you want about Florida, Texas, and Sweden, but they have a plan, and they have stuck to it, even when cases soared. Say what you will about Boris Johnson, but he announced a re-opening, and has stuck to it.
The Irish Government has no plan. It is drifting, and dithering, and waiting for Tony to tell it what to do.
Holohan, for all his faults, is not responsible for the lack of a plan. Planning is not his job. His job is to react to the situation on the ground on a given day, not to look at the bigger picture. That is what we have a Government for. The problem is that they either can not, or will not, do it. We have rarely, in the century long history of the state, had a more ill-equipped shower of people at the helm.