“We need to talk”, apparently, is the name of the new memoir to be published, later this year, by the one time Chief Medical Officer, slash King, of Ireland. One of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless, suggested that it should have been called “The Great Escape” instead, on the basis of Holohan’s very well timed departure from the role of CMO just before awkward questions about Ireland’s pandemic record finally started to be asked.
Nevertheless, it is a book that I, for one, shall read. And whatever one’s views of Holohan, having his side of the story on the record will be an important document for future historians when they come to assess exactly what happened in Ireland over the two years of the pandemic restrictions.
All memoirs or biographies, by their very nature, are self-justifying. Nobody in history has ever written one called “I admit it, it was all my fault”. To that extent, it would be wrong to blame Dr. Holohan if the text that emerges later this year just so happens to present him as a prudent, evidence-based, impartial medic who knew that his job was to ignore all the noise from right and left and just follow where “the science” lead him, without fear or favour. I am relatively certain that this is, after all, how he sees himself. And in his defence, people prone to introspection and second-guessing themselves don’t make great leaders.
So, the book, we can safely predict, will be Holohan’s side of the story. And that’s fine. The important thing, and the opportunity here, does not arise from the fact of the book at all.
It arises instead from the fact that Dr. Holohan will have signed a contract with his publishers. And in that contract will be a set number of high-profile media appearances and interviews to promote the book. It is a cinch, for example, that since the book is scheduled to hit shelves in September, Dr. Holohan will be amongst the first interviewees for the next host of the Late Late Show, whoever she is. There will be sit-downs with the Irish Times. There’ll be an interview for Pat Kenny on Newstalk, and perhaps Matt Cooper on the Last Word. There’s no point writing a book if you are not going to get out there and sell it. We’ll ask – but I fear there may not be a sit-down interview with Gript, unfortunately.
All of which means that there will be an opportunity, at long last, for the media to ask the questions of Dr. Holohan which they were either unwilling, or unable, to ask of him during the pandemic itself. It will be an acid test for the media – have they decided that the legend of Saint Tony the Good is so untouchable that it may not be challenged? Or will they, on reflection, decide that this is an invaluable opportunity to probe the decisions made, the basis for them, and the consequences wrought by those decisions.
For example, excess mortality in Ireland remains much higher now than it was before the pandemic. Is that a direct consequence of the Government’s shuttering of cancer screening services during lockdown, and, if so, does Dr. Holohan now accept that this was a catastrophic error? What was the scientific basis for shutting down those services?
What were the fundamental errors made in relation to nursing homes, and the thousands of deaths that took place inside their walls? Does he accept, in hindsight, that vaccine passports were both unnecessary, and a breach of civil liberties? Does he accept that the covid vaccines simply did not, and do not, work as he and others advertised them to work?
All of these are important questions, as are the questions about his usurpation of political power during his time as CMO: there was the infamous incident where he took a walk down a Dublin Street, saw some people out partying, and sent a remarkably intemperate tweet about what a disgrace it was. Within 24 hours the Gardai, as if responding to a Royal Command, were on the streets with truncheons.
One would not expect many, or possibly any, of these questions to be addressed by Holohan’s book. And that is precisely why the media must take the opportunity this book presents to ask them.
Ireland is not to have a full scale covid enquiry, the Government has decreed, because of the very reasonable-sounding explanation that Government does not want future emergency personnel making decisions with an eye to what future enquiries will say. There is also the unspoken but genuine concern that covid enquiries which propose to assign blame for errors will run into the usual Irish problem, which is a full squadron of the finest minds the law library has to offer, charging in to delay affairs and defend reputations for a significant fee – most of which ends up getting paid by the state.
Neither of those are concerns, though, for the media when it comes to Dr. Holohan’s forthcoming book tour. This may be the last opportunity the country ever has to get answers from the man who effectively ran the country for two of its most troubled years.
It is an opportunity that it would be shameful to miss.