Fianna Fáil TD Marc MacSharry has said he has “no confidence” in Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s handling of the covid-19 pandemic, and hit out at the government’s liberal use of lockdowns as the “only strategy” for dealing with the problem.
Speaking on Newstalk, the Sligo-Leitrim TD had some choice words for the government.
“I haven’t had confidence in the entire Government approach to covid management. They’ve abdicated their responsibility.
“We haven’t sought to build capacity, we haven’t sought to track & trace to the extent that it works. We haven’t seen to introduce guidelines that will see wet pubs or gyms reopen.
“We have had one strategy which is based on hope, vaccination and lockdown. That’s not a strategy – and in that context, no. I don’t have confidence.”
“Nothing undermines public resilience more than the mixed-messaging we’ve had throughout the entirety of the covid crisis since last March,” said MacSharry.
“This is a personal view, and I’ve been consistent on it: we need to develop a strategy for living with covid. Yesterday on another show, Dr. Cillian de Gascun said covid will be with society in the world for a number of centuries. Now, I know that’s scary. But it certainly underpins the need to develop a strategy to live with it.
“The WHO speaks of lockdowns as a temporary measure, to build capacities, to detect, isolate and trace. We’ve used it as our sole strategy, and there’s been huge collateral damage from that – psychologically, socially and economically. I believe we’ve wasted three lockdowns without building those capacities.”
When asked how he could speak out against the government as a government TD, MacSharry said that he had been voicing these criticisms “from the very beginning.”
“Since the very beginning I’ve been saying these things. While I’m a member of one of the government parties, Fianna Fáil, I work for the people, and my responsibility is to call out and identify issues when they arise. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.
“I’m not going to get party political about it, if you want to you can. Yes I’m in Fianna Fáil, but that doesn’t mean we’re all clones and we can’t make suggestions to improve the matter.
“I believe we should put forth suggestions, and our government and the Oireachtas generally have a responsibility to balance the advice of the medics to keep us all safe with the needs of a functioning society. We have failed in that regard.”
At this point, MacSharry was asked if he ever voiced these concerns to Fianna Fáil Health Minister Stephen Donnelly.
“Every week, every week. Absolutely. I’m doing that all the time. Clearly the government are taking advice exclusively from NPHET, NIAC and other bodies, who have done a very good job exercising their right to give advice.
When asked if he believed the lockdown had worked, MacSharry expressed doubts.
“I’m not so sure. It’s the only thing we’ve tried. We’ll never know. quite frankly. What we tend to do to defend our actions is we look at the most extreme example and say “Look how bad they are, they opened this and they opened that.”
“What I’m saying is we need to develop a strategy. We haven’t even been open to try and show an ambition to develop that strategy.
“Mark my words, this October, numbers will be up again. What is our approach going to be then? Is it further lockdown? Is it ‘pull the children out of school’ again? Is it close everything down again? That is just not sustainable. To me that’s not acceptable. And I think we need to put the greater good first.”
MacSharry said he had “no confidence” in the vaccine rollout, and said he had been urging the government to go “an independent route, rather than depend on the EU, who had no competence in health up until now.”
“Because we wanted to take the goody-two-shoes EU member approach, we weren’t prepared to push the boat out even still, and in parallel with that, failed to procure other amounts of vaccines,” he said.
“The horse is gone now, in that so many other countries around the world are further ahead. We’re not even prepared to put in an advance order for Sputnik pending its EMA approval.”
Previously, MacSharry had spoken out against the government’s lockdown policy, arguing that Ireland’s coronavirus response can no longer be based upon “total risk-aversion.”