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The Health Department has hired a private company to handle public relations after being accused of creating confusion around Covid.
Stephen Donnelly’s Department has engaged consulting and communications firm Teneo to help with the launch of the Covid medium-term plan next week.
It comes as the government’s communication strategy was called “chaos” in the Dáil this week.
A spokesperson denied that the public relations firm had been hired to deal with mounting criticism and accusations of conflicting messages around Covid from opposition parties.
The spokesperson added that Teneo had been hired in the short term to implement the plan.
The government has postponed new restrictions on home visiting that are widely expected in Dublin and Limerick until the new ‘Living with Covid’ plan is launched on Tuesday, which will run for at least six months.
The plan is expected to establish a rating system from one to five for different parts of the country, as well as an overall national rating.
The first degree will be normal, while the five is the most serious level, up to and including a second national blockade.
Meanwhile, the Tánaiste has warned that Ireland will suffer multiple economic shocks caused by new waves of Covid in the coming months.
“I think it’s very possible that we will see multiple waves of the virus and the pandemic. Be it small waves lapping at our feet or large waves hitting us again. Again, we just don’t know for sure,” Varadkar said.
He said there is “no rule book” to follow on the current economic decline caused by Covid.
“Any political decision now is extremely difficult because the whole situation is very uncertain, this is a recession like we haven’t seen in our lives, it probably hasn’t happened in a century.
“It’s probably something more like a war or an invasion. A huge demand shock to the economy, and wars also have phases.
“That is the difficulty we are in, I think this is a virus that is not going to go away. The pandemic is still ravaging the whole world, and Europe is currently experiencing a second wave.”
Varadkar said there will be a deficit of at least 25 billion euros this year, however it will be “closer to 30 billion euros.”
“From the Government’s point of view, our macroeconomic and fiscal policy at the moment is for large deficits, but we want to be in the middle of the pack when we compare ourselves to our peers in the eurozone or other small and medium-sized countries in Northern Europe. in the eurozone.
“We don’t want to be the best guys in the class in terms of fiscal policy, but we don’t want to be the European country that has the most emphasis, as well as a pretty big debt on this,” he said. said.
Mr. Varadkar said that industries such as the event industry, live music and travel agents will be the focus of support in the next budget.
Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said Covid’s medium-term plan will aim to “find the sweet spot” between keeping people safe and living alongside the virus.
Harris also moved to vigorously defend the acting medical director, Dr. Ronan Glynn, after Fianna Fáil TD Marc McSharry was reported to have said at a meeting of his parliamentary party that he should be removed from television because he is scaring the public. .
“The acting CMO saves lives, the acting CMO is someone we are indebted to as a country. He is a man who stepped into the gap under difficult circumstances.
“I know that during my time as Minister of Health how incredibly hard he has worked, I can only imagine how incredibly exhausted he must be. But thankfully I would say that he is too busy to bother reading those comments.”
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