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Information is the currency in government and news travels fast. Within hours of its conclusion Wednesday, word spread in official circles about a fierce meeting between top government officials and Medical Director Tony Holohan.
Some of the officials present expressed in forceful terms their own displeasure, shared by their political masters, for what they see as attempts by Holohan and his colleagues from the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) to “pigeonhole” the Government into a more cautious, conservative and, ultimately, restrictive political corner.
Martin Fraser, secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach and the most powerful official in the entire government apparatus, made his feelings clear. Robert Watt, the top official of the Department of Public Expenditure, also intervened.
“I went crazy,” was the report of an official. “A humdinger,” said another.
Fraser is said to have criticized the number of times team members appeared in the media, where they had been pushing the need to be cautious in any opening.
Two days earlier, Mary Favier, a GP who is also a member of the team, told RTÉ: “We really need to follow our public health officials in this area, they are the experts.”
Several other team members and allies appeared on the radio waves in the following hours and days to warn of the need to follow their advice.
Whether they knew it or not, the media campaign, and that’s how it turned out, was causing problems in government buildings.
People in government believe that this is a careful and deliberate strategy by public health experts to pressure the government toward a more restrictive and cautious reopening.
Holohan is central to the team’s operation and that is why the government’s rejection has been directed at him personally. He is, say the people who have worked with him, forceful and focused; they also say he’s reluctant to take no for an answer.
“It is like Hezbollah, there are no negotiations with him,” laughs an official, who speaks highly of him. But ultimately, as officials have been reminding him, it is the government that makes the decisions. Holohan knows this, so perhaps the team is looking to make his case public.
The differences between the two parties do not only concern what should be done in the future, they also concern the recent past. The government side believes that “Tier 3-plus” restrictions are what have controlled the recent surge in infections. The team insists it was “anticipatory behavior” – the expectation that the confinement will cause people to modify their behavior.
There is also a suspicion in the Government that the team does not share all the data it has. There are many reasons for his suspicion, including the fact that the team insisted on a lockout when the numbers were at their peak. Sharp government officials listened to RTÉ’s George Lee, a journalist with a special vision and affinity for the team’s thinking, arguably, say that “Nphet has far more numbers than are published.”
In a not unrelated development, the Taoiseach Department has commissioned its own data classification operation.
EY consultants have been selected to process the data in order to get a clearer picture of exactly where the infections are occurring. The idea is, according to sources familiar with the report, that commercial areas that are closed but with little risk of spreading infections can be opened and remain open.
Experts ‘scared’
This is not just a question of competing, competing personalities and everything that people in politics find in that narrative. There are and have been substantial differences between politicians and public health experts on the best approach to managing the pandemic, and how those decisions are made has a direct effect on people’s lives.
It will have a direct effect on how people celebrate Christmas. The relationship between the team and the government, however harsh and suspect, is a place of enormous power.
According to a source familiar with the group’s thinking, the team was “really scared” by the recent stagnation in the decline in reported daily infections. After peaking at 1,200, daily cases fell for three weeks, before starting to rise again.
But the change in trajectory was taken by team officials as a matter of caution, in immediate conflict with the government’s desire to have as broad and lasting an openness to grassroots society as possible.
It is a simplification, but not misleading, to characterize the different priorities of the team and the government in this way. That has been the divide between the two sides since before they fell apart from the last blockade.
Public health experts favor more restrictions, politicians less.
And that, broadly speaking, will be the split between the two parties next week when the plan is finalized for the opening, for Christmas and beyond. Indoor hospitality (restaurants and pubs), travel restrictions and the pace of reopening are likely to be the key battlegrounds.
“Everyone is preparing for it,” says one person who will participate in the discussions. “All set for a great fight next week.”
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