Less public-facing role ahead for Nphet, Tánaiste says

The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) will transition to a less prominent and less public-facing role in the coming months, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.

The Government intends to scale back the team from as early as the end of October, although Mr Varadkar and Taoiseach Micheál Martin said on Tuesday that no date had been set for this.

Nphet and its associated subgroups will move from an emergency footing to a “mainstream surveillance function” in the Department of Health and Health Service Executive (HSE), a source told The Irish Times.

The Cabinet subcommittee on Covid-19 and a senior officials group that meets weekly to discuss the pandemic will also be stood down in the weeks ahead. The functions of the high-level vaccination taskforce will transfer to the HSE’s National Immunisation Office.

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Nphet on Tuesday reported a further 1,382 cases of Covid-19 and said there were 355 Covid-19 patients hospitalised, 54 of whom were in intensive care.

‘Very grateful’

Mr Varadkar said that while the Government and Nphet did not always see eye-to-eye during the pandemic, they were always “on the same side”.

“We are very fortunate that we had Nphet and we should be very grateful to the members of Nphet for the work they have done over the last 18 months,” he told a press conference in Government Buildings.

“Most of the advice they have given us has been right most of the time. That is not easy in this kind of work. We shouldn’t forget many members of Nphet also have to do full-time jobs. The entire of our society owes them an enormous debt of gratitude and the fact that we didn’t always see eye-to-eye didn’t mean that we weren’t always on the same side and we always were.”

The Tánaiste said that while the team would remain in place for “some months yet”, it was intended that it would revert to “a more normal role and perhaps be slimmed down, and perhaps a less prominent, less public-facing role”.

‘Good advice’

“But the last thing the Government would want to do is dissolve the body that has given us such good advice and such reliable information for the last year and a half,” he added.

The Taoiseach said the change should be viewed as a transition to a new phase of the pandemic.

“Public health has always been essential to how Ireland has approached this pandemic. When public health is central to that endeavour, countries have generally done well,” he said. “In countries where public health was relegated or undermined consistently by certain leaders, the performance of those countries was poor in terms of mortality, case numbers and hospitalisations. So public health will still be essential.”