On Thursday evening at 5pm a select few Cabinet Ministers and senior officials gathered with leading figures from the health service to take stock of where the country finds itself in the battle against Covid-19.
Known as the Cabinet coronavirus committee, it has been the place the key decisions are made that impact on daily life. By comparison, the Tuesday Cabinet meeting can often be little more than a rubber-stamping exercise.
Everyone pays close attention, especially the media. Given the blows to morale caused by each extra week of lockdown, clear communications from the Government – especially this committee – have never been more important.
Indeed, a recent European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control report explicitly urged governments to be transparent about the ongoing uncertainty around restrictions and to employ “accessibility and clarity of messages”.
Yet there was no such clear messaging on Thursday. Ministers, say sources, pressed the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) on how much longer Level 5 restrictions are needed. An answer was “hard to pin down”, says one source.
Instead, Ministers were left with the impression that Nphet wanted only “modest changes” until May and the majority of existing severe restrictions to stay in place because Covid-19 numbers are too high, and not falling by enough.
Coupled with the fact that Nphet want to monitor the effect of the staggered return of school classes, this meant that no easing of other restrictions could be expected when the Government makes its latest decision next week.
While scraps of information began to emerge, the Irish Daily Mirror published an interview with Taoiseach Micheál Martin in which he said that “until the end of April you can look at significant restrictions” which would then be reviewed.
Caught unawares
Some of the public were caught unawares, and what followed was a wave of anger. Some felt that any announcement about nine more weeks of lockdown should be made formally, and not in a newspaper interview.
However, the fact is that Mr Martin has been engaged in something of a media blitz, giving interviews to almost every publication and outlet in a bid to get messaging out.
He acknowledged this himself at a brief press conference on Friday evening when he said: “You have all asked for interviews at different times and I have facilitated all of you. I mean I have now, let’s be straight about that.”
Naturally, the questions that many journalists ask are the ones they believe the public want answered: “When can I reopen my business, meet my family, visit my relative in a nursing home and what is the plan?”
In the face of persistent questions about what exactly the next nine weeks will look like, Mr Martin said on Friday: “I have been very consistent for the last number of weeks in the Dáil saying that we are pursuing a prolonged suppression of the virus and we are going to get numbers down.”
Ten days ago, Varadkar was upbeat, saying he hoped from March 5th people could meet outdoors. Less than 48 hours later, the Taoiseach was far gloomier
This mirrors comments he made at a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting two weeks ago when he said Ireland would remain in a prolonged period of lockdown.
There has been much dancing on the head of a pin over recent hours around whether he is talking about Level 5 or Level 4 or something else. “Nothing is set in stone,” he told reporters on Friday.
On RTÉ’s News at One, the Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, pointed out that Mr Martin never specified that it would be “Level 5 until May”.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the Government was dithering, and she called on the Taoiseach to “come out and set the record straight and bring to an end the spin, the leaks and the uncertainty”.
In competition
She also said that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are “in competition” with each other.
Mr Varadkar has denied that there are mixed communications coming from the Government because three parties are involved. “We are all working together, but what we are communicating is bad news,” he said.
Sometimes, Ministers can be forgiven for believing that they are being blamed because they constantly have to give bad news, or that they are being unfairly attacked for not giving guarantees when guarantees cannot be given.
But details matter. Just as importantly, so does tone. While it is mainly correct to say the overarching message is broadly the same – one of a cautious and conservative approach – the way messages have been communicated differs vastly.
Ten days ago, Mr Varadkar was upbeat, saying he hoped from March 5th that people could meet outdoors and that construction could return, a message copied by Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien.
Less than 48 hours later, the Taoiseach was far gloomier, noting that “high levels of restrictions” would last until Easter. While he was doing that, the Green Party leader Eamon Ryan would not speculate about anything.
Everything about this stage of the pandemic is hard. The public is tired, irritated. Many of them are broke. Many people are at the edge of their tolerance. Others fret about the pace of vaccinations.
Ministers cannot predict the future, but they must leave meetings understanding exactly what has been agreed and communicating it properly afterwards. And they must all say the same things.
