Inquiry into State’s handling of Covid-19 pandemic to take place next year - Taoiseach

An inquiry into the State’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic will be established in the new year, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar met with World Health Organisation director general Tedros Ghebreyesus and executive director Mike Ryan on Monday morning. Afterward, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said the Government would be progressing the development of an international treaty aimed at strengthening pandemic prevention following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Mr Varadkar said the Government now had the terms of reference ready for an inquiry into the State’s handling of the pandemic. “We have the draft terms of reference for the inquiry ready now. We have committed to consulting with the Opposition before bringing the terms of reference to Cabinet and just with so many unpredicted events happening in the last couple of weeks we haven’t been able to schedule it at a time that works for everyone. So it will be the new year before that goes to Cabinet.

“But the inquiry will certainly be up and running in 2024. You can be sure of that. It is something I’m very keen we should do, because we need to work out what we did right and what we did wrong and what we can do better should we face a pandemic in the future, always understanding that the next pandemic when it comes is likely to be very different one to the one that happened.”

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Mr Ryan praised what he said was a coherent leadership during the pandemic, and said that “science was driving the car which was good; it wasn’t the case everywhere else”.

Asked what format he believed the inquiry should take, Mr Ryan cautioned that one which seeks to apportion blame may not result in an improved response in future.

He said in his experience “you never do anything in medicine or health without having some sense of ‘we could have done it better.’ Going back to review is a fantastic idea. A general issue we found is that reviews where the objective is to improve and get better tend to be very functional and come out with concrete things that matter and make a difference to people. Reviews that are aimed at finding people to blame tend to do just that, they find people to blame and very often do not result in any sustainable, discernible improvement in performance.”

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