Burke hopes Covid inquiry won’t turn into a ‘courtroom drama’

Minister of State Peter Burke is hopeful the looming inquiry into the government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic won’t turn into a “courtroom drama”.

He told the Westmeath Examiner this week that officials from the Gardaí, HSE, NPHET, and government ministers and leaders will all be made to account in a public forum for decisions they made during the crisis.

The terms of reference for the inquiry are currently being set, with a final proposal nearing completion from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

Minister Burke said it’s important to learn from the state’s successes and failures during the pandemic.

“It’s critical when you have a once in a generation event like a pandemic, that you reflect on decisions made over that emergency period,” he said.

“If a decision did not work out, we need to learn from it and prepare ourselves for a future catastrophic event on how the state should respond.”

The Fine Gael TD noted a mistake was made concerning PPE procurement.

“You’ll remember many Aer Lingus planes coming from China with PPE and equipment at the beginning that wasn’t up to standard and couldn’t be used,” he said.

“There were unusable gowns, masks, and ventilators – decisions like that will need to be looked at.”

Deputy Burke said he’s hopeful the inquiry won’t turn into “a blame game”.

“Some decisions were taken on the hoof, so to speak, that turned out to be very successful,” he said.

“You can save lives by acting quickly but sometimes when you do act quickly it doesn’t work out and it's important not to berate people who made decisions with the best possible information they had at the time.

“If we turn it into a courtroom drama and point fingers then people will be reluctant to make decisions if something like this happens again."

The Minister of State for EU Affairs said he is confident that the government got “most of the big calls right” during the crisis.

“We have seen reports of no excess deaths in Ireland during the pandemic which puts us on the top level in Europe in that regard.

“There were also about 600,000 people who lost their jobs in three weeks and we got all of those safely back to work and have since increased employment.

“So many mortgages were paused and so many people were in unprecedented situations - but we got through it.”

Deputy Burke said there was no shortage of scary moments throughout the pandemic.

“At the beginning when we were sitting at home watching TV, we saw the army being called into Lombardy in Italy to set up makeshift morgues which was stark,” he said.

“We had to respond to that coming at us and as an island, we were deciding whether to shut down travel or not at that time – there were so many massive calls to be made.

“People were dying before your very eyes and you can’t have life support for 30 per cent of the population – it was a horrific time for decision-makers.”

Mullingar Hospital performed “exceptionally well” throughout the crisis, according to Deputy Burke.

“I remember discussing contingency plans with the hospital manager at the time and some of those plans were very stark and concerning,” he said.

“We are very lucky in Mullingar to have had some outstanding cases of people who were on ventilators for long periods and survived.

“Their survival is a testament to the hospital's handling of the pandemic.”

Deputy Burke said an inquiry in 2014 into the state's banking crisis has set a precedence for the upcoming Covid inquiry and should be similar in format.