Una Mullally: Covid-19 has exposed the serious injustices of Irish society

At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, people in Ireland weren't just lucky to have a collective sense of empathy, resilience, kindness and social cohesion to lean into. We have done a tremendous amount of work as a nation to understand one another, to centre neighbourliness and the importance of community spirit, and to band together.

Despite narratives to the contrary, people are inherently good and selfless, and in times of need will extend help and assistance to others. That’s why people don’t walk away from an accident when they can save someone, even when there is a risk to themselves. It’s why people in Ireland give a lot to charity, even when we’re financially squeezed ourselves. It’s why we repay kindness generations later, as seen by the assistance extended to our Native American brothers and sisters.

Our 21st-century social revolution created – or perhaps made explicit – an Irish society that is characterised not by division and conflict, but by solidarity and kindness. While criticism of politicians is widespread, these criticisms are rarely rooted in unfounded anger or hatred, but in a sense that a duty of care is being shirked, along with annoyances regarding perceptions of incompetence.

In June, a social science study was published by Science Magazine titled The robustness of reciprocity: Experimental evidence that each form of reciprocity is robust to the presence of other forms of reciprocity. The study examined prosocial behaviour, and how “we help those in our networks who have helped us (direct reciprocity), pay forward help we have received from one person to another person in our network (generalised reciprocity), give more in the presence of network members who can reward our giving (reputational giving), and relatedly, reward network members who have given to others (rewarding reputation)”. In the study’s experiment, “helping” was costly to the giver yet socially beneficial. The study concluded: “The robustness of reciprocity is, in many ways, remarkable.”

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Irish paradoxes

The public has taken care of the collective response. One of the many paradoxes in Irish society is how our mistrust of authority sits alongside a propensity for obedience. That obedience can manifest in bad ways, where groupthink, shame, and fear have in the past colluded in oppressive cultures rooted in a kind of collective surveillance. But it’s also about “doing the right thing”, keeping each other in check, and leveraging personal responsibility to fulfil a group effort.

Now we have a lockdown in three midlands counties because of coronavirus clusters in meat factories and in direct provision centres, and the general population in those counties are bearing the brunt of failures in those settings. It is not the fault of “the midlands” that clusters have occurred in direct provision. That is the fault of the system of direct provision, which is racist and inhumane and needs to end.

Since the outset of the pandemic, campaigners and residents of direct provision continuously warned that unless people were given room to socially distance, and unless PPE was made available, Covid-19 would spread in these settings, and that is what has happened. This is coupled with clusters in meat processing and dog food factories, locations where alarm bells were sounding from the outset of the pandemic, and as major outbreaks were observed in similar settings in other jurisdictions. There is also an ugly crossover, where workers in some factory settings were also living in direct provision.

Overcrowded housing, poverty, deprivation, and risky settings are systemic failures

We now know that direct provision isn’t just an immediate threat to those who live in it, that it isn’t only a setting where people suffer greatly in terms of their physical, mental and emotional health.

Direct provision is a threat to public health. People need to be housed adequately, they need space and privacy, they need proper care and decent nutrition. What is the Government going to do about that? The narrative that ending direct provision will be a lengthy process indicates a lack of urgency and an absence of political will to take immediate proactive steps to dismantle this awful stain on contemporary Ireland.

Telling stories

The story of publicans – rightly annoyed by the arbitrary nature of the illogical €9 “substantial” meal rule – is easy to tell. There is no end to the number of publicans who will appear in media to voice their concerns. It’s also a relatable story, as the public is familiar with pubs. Less easy to tell is the story of direct provision, the story of the hidden and the marginalised.

Another uncomfortable story to tell is that the midlands is the most deprived region in the State. One in five people in the midlands is unable to afford basic living requirements, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in February. One in six people in the midlands is at risk of falling below the poverty line.

The people of Ireland have, for the most part, done their job. A proud, responsible and active citizenship has displayed remarkable selflessness and resilience. Overcrowded housing, poverty, deprivation, and risky settings are systemic failures.

The pandemic is less a leveller and more an exposing force. It’s convenient to ignore the poor and marginalised, but when failures in our society are present, we no longer have the luxury of ignoring them, because “all in this together” is not just a rallying cry for a collective effort, “all in this together” also means that when those failures are so blatant, everyone suffers.