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“The advisers advise, the ministers decide.”
This guiding principle of Margaret Thatcher, which was articulated during a discussion of economic policy in a very different era, has been remembered in the British press in recent days.
Many years later, the question of who applies the vaccines has arisen as never before, as the authorities take extraordinary measures to deal with the coronavirus crisis.
Here, like almost everywhere, big decisions are being led by teams of experts.
The Taoiseach and the Minister of Health in particular have made a virtue of being led almost entirely by senior scientists and doctors, namely the Medical Director, Dr. Tony Holohan and the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET ).
Before the announcement of measures to ease the restrictions made Friday night, Minister Simon Harris told the Dáil that those measures would be “based on public health” and nothing more.
His comments came after some tensions in the cabinet where ministers tried to affirm the need for other imperatives – social, economic and political – to form part of general considerations.
There are very significant benefits of removing life and death decisions from the hands of politicians who could risk contaminating them with ideological beliefs or with their own political needs. It also helps build trust and a common sense of purpose.
But at a time when the state is assuming enormous powers, there is also a risk of empowering experts who are highly qualified but who ultimately do not respond to the public in the same way that politicians do.
There is a growing sense of frustration that decisions are being led by a group that holds its meetings behind closed doors and seems inaccessible to most politicians.
It is a tension that politicians are exerting in recent days. And it is a tension that can only be managed through greater openness and transparency.
The leadership of Dr. Holohan and the team of around 40 NPHET experts has been enormously important in facilitating a remarkable degree of political consensus around the overall response to the virus.
This consensus has been evident in the Dáil sessions, once a week, in which the opposition TDs have been asking many questions about a specific element of the general response, such as business support, testing capacity and the requirements for people in nursing homes or direct provision, but are largely supportive of the general government response.
However, what is also evident is the growing feeling among the opposition that this consensus is based on trust. Looking at Dáil’s discussion hours on Thursday, it became clear that the confidence offer is starting to run out.
There is a growing sense of frustration that decisions are being led by a group that holds its meetings behind closed doors and seems inaccessible to most politicians.
It is not possible for TDs to ask parliamentary questions, for example. No committee meetings are held to facilitate the convening of public officials to provide more information and answer questions. Although ministers answer questions in the Dáil, some in the cabinet are not even TD, so they cannot even enter the Chamber.
The Dáil can only facilitate up to 50 out of 180 members at the same time and legal advice has been offered to the Oireachtas Business Committee that virtual sessions via video link, as is happening in the UK, would not be constitutionally possible. (There is a possibility that this will happen if members call from their offices within the Leinster House boundary.)
A collapse in trust means problems for unity of purpose and the shared national effort that has been a crucial ingredient in enabling measures to contain the virus, prevent deaths and ensure that hospitals are not overloaded.
For the second week in a row, Labor Party leader Alan Kelly raised questions about NPHET’s transparency. While his party fully supports his work, he is more concerned with the decision-making process.
Mr. Kelly has asked who named the group’s membership, which grew from around a dozen when it was created in late January to around 40 today; why the minutes of their meetings are not published routinely, as is the case with state boards or public bodies, and how they communicate their messages to policy makers.
As an example of why more openness is needed, he raised the issue of targets for the number of tests that should be carried out, set by Dr. Holohan and NPHET and articulated by the Minister of Health.
Kelly said NPHET “overstepped the mark, legally speaking” by requiring a number of tests that, he said, the HSE believed was beyond its capacity.
A collapse in trust means problems for unity of purpose and the shared national effort that has been a crucial ingredient in enabling measures to contain the virus, prevent deaths and ensure that hospitals are not overloaded.
Under the Health Law, HSE is tasked with making arrangements to carry out the tests, he said.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin noted that not only the Dáil, but also the media and the people “have been willing to suspend much of the assertive supervision that a free democracy like ours insists on.”
He said this should not be taken by the government “as permission to limit debate.” The only reasonable response to controls that people have collectively accepted, he said, is for the government to increase transparency and consultation.
“Every significant study done on emergency response has shown that trust depends on transparency and effectiveness depends on allowing different voices to enter the discussions,” he said.
Solidarity / PBP TD Richard Boyd Barrett said he had asked for the minutes of the NPHET meetings six times, as well as the position papers and advice he gave to the government, but had not received a response.
And there were more signs of consensus erosion, when Róisín Shortall, of the Social Democrats, said there has been “closed-door decision-making, political turnaround, kite flying, media leaks and a very disturbing absence of openness.”
The Government, for its part, has taken steps to convince the opposition and the public that it is acting as openly and transparently as possible.
On Wednesday, he released a report on NPHET’s governance, detailing how it works, its full membership, and the membership of its eight subcommittees.
The minutes of the NPHET meetings, until mid-April, were released on Thursday and Minister Harris promised that the letters he sends to her after each of their meetings will be published in due course.
Opposition parties are looking for something more. For example, there are increasing calls, first suggested by Labor, that a group of Oireachtas crusader parties should be established to discuss and evaluate the overall government response.
In a small letter notified to the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, said that facing the pandemic requires the cooperation of European citizens more than ever.
To foster such cooperation in decisions of “historical importance,” he argued, high levels of trust in public authorities are needed.
For that reason, it was important “to maintain high levels of transparency, not despite the crisis, but precisely because of the crisis,” she says.
It is a warning that policy makers will pay attention if they want to maintain the common sense of purpose on which their crisis management has been based.
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