Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has queried the Government’s decision to impose a Covid lockdown in the winter of 2021, as he pledged to have the Covid inquiry set in motion next year.
Mr Varadkar was speaking to journalists during his visit to South Korea, adding that the aim is to have an inquiry into how Ireland handled Covid concluded within 12 months.
The Irish Examiner reports that the Taoiseach “said he regrets the decision by the Government to introduce Ireland’s third and final lockdown in December 2021 to battle the Omicron variant.”
He said: “My sense, and it is only my sense, is the first lockdown, it was absolutely the right thing to do. We didn’t know what we were dealing with. New virus, high mortality rate, no vaccines, absolutely the right thing to do.
“The final lockdown, the one done for Omicron, I understand why that decision was made. I was there. But I’m not convinced that the benefits of that outweighed the non-benefits,” Mr Varadkar added.
He said he believed the Government “handled it very well” regarding the Covid crisis, but said that “nobody gets everything right.”
As reported by The Irish Examiner who were on the ground in Seoul for the South Korean visit last week, Varadkar claimed that pressure to lockdown the country came from the public and also the media.
“There was a lot of public pressure and even pressure from media and society in general, to lockdown quickly and lockdown hard,” the Taoiseach claimed.
He admitted that two years on, lockdowns did have an impact on people’s “mental health,” the health service and “on education.”
“But I think we’re now two or three years later, seeing some of the impacts, not of covid the virus but of lockdowns on people’s mental health, on education, on the health service — screening that didn’t happen, diagnoses that didn’t happen,” Mr Varadkar told journalists.
Regarding a Covid Inquiry into how the State handled Covid, Mr Varadkar said that it would be up and running next year, and the goal was to have it concluded within the next 12 months.
He added that the draft terms of reference for the inquiry had been “seen and cleared,” stating: “It’s (the memo) ready to go. The terms of reference are agreed in principle, as is the format, so the next couple of weeks … up and running next year I think realistically by the time we’ve identified and agreed people who will do it.
“I’ve seen a lot of inquiries go on for six, seven, eight years. I’m not not sure what will be served by that. So [I] would like to see it done in less than a year – a year at most – but that’s not something you control once it’s set up. It has to do its business,” Mr Varadkar said.
While the UK Covid Inquiry forced Government Ministers to hand over their phones, with Whatsapps forming essential records in the much-publicised inquiry, the Taoiseach said that an Irish Inquiry would be different.
He said text messages would not be included,and while that sort of investigation “might be very entertaining,” he was unsure of what it would achieve.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, speaking over the weekend, signalled a green light for an upcoming inquiry, saying that the terms would be finalised shortly.
He made the comments at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, saying that the Department of the Taoiseach was expected to put forward a framework for a review “soon enough.”
Asked about the possibility of key government figures appearing before an inquiry, he said: “I don’t think there’s going to be any issue with the Covid review here.
“You’ve a relatively small number of people who worked well together. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other but we did work well together,” he said, adding: “You know, it functioned well.”
The Minister for Health went on to claim that “people always look for the drama,” stating his belief that “as a nation we responded well” to the Covid crisis.
He added: “And if we look at the coverage to date of Ireland’s response to Covid it focuses on personalities. It focuses on relationships.
“It focuses on colour, which is fine. We’re all interested in that but when you take all of that out broadly I think what we will find is as a nation we responded well to Covid-19.”