Decision-makers’ engagement with Covid review will not be in public – chairwoman

Senior decision-makers’ engagement with Ireland’s pandemic review will not be aired in public, the chairwoman of the Covid-19 Evaluation said.

Professor Anne Scott said the process was not a public inquiry and was “not here to point fingers”.

She made the comments as she urged the public to share their experiences of the pandemic to inform its assessment of Ireland’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prof Scott described the process as a non-statutory, non-adversarial independent review and repeatedly stressed it was not a public inquiry.

She said a non-statutory status creates a “more open, more flexible dynamic” that could “assist engagement rather than the opposite” and could “hopefully avoid the need and demand for legal representation”.

It is expected to use engagement from different figures and groups, “voluminous” documentation from departments and agencies, and research to produce a final report within 12-18 months.

She said the expert panel will produce an “actionable” report of recommendations which will be presented to the Taoiseach and they would “hope” that they will then be actioned by the Government.

The evaluation’s engagement with senior politicians, civil servants and experts who informed decisions made during the pandemic will not be held in public.

A transcript will not be published but the interviews will be recorded.

Asked whether the engagement of figures such as health ministers, former chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan and senior members of the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), would be available to view on a livestream, Professor Scott said: “No, this isn’t a public inquiry.

“Our approach is open and iterative so I can’t definitely say to you right now ‘we’re going to be doing X, Y and Z’.

“We may have a public debate about certain things, but we won’t necessarily be actually interviewing somebody on the livestream.”

Asked again whether members of the public would be able to watch senior figures engage with the evaluation, Prof Scott said it was “unlikely”.

She added: “In my view, at this moment, it is unlikely that that kind of information or evidence gathering will be done in public.”

Prof Scott said that individuals would not be named, before adding “we are not here to point fingers”.

She said: “This is actually an evaluation, and an evaluation focused on learning lessons so that we strengthen and improve our decision-making for the future.

“People were well used to seeing the chief medical officer or the taoiseach or the minister at Cabinet or whoever they happened to be, on the screens every night during the pandemic, they remember what they were seeing and what they were doing.

“I don’t think it requires us to actually rerun that.

“As I’ve said, this isn’t about reliving the past.

“It is about learning lessons.

“It’s about being open and developing a non-adversarial, co-operative means of getting as full a picture as we can in terms of what happened.

“As one of your colleagues has already pointed out, a lot of the formal decisions that were made that we lived with the impacts of whatever they happen to be in terms of restrictions, is already in the public arena.

“One of the key things we don’t have, however, is what we’re focusing on today, which is actually trying to engage with the public to get an insight into their lived experience, what was it like for them to live through the pandemic.”

In making an appeal for people to engage with the evaluation, Prof Scott said it was “vitally important that we hear from people across the country”.

She said that the pandemic affected everyone but had a “profound impact on some”, and mentioned women giving birth alone, curtailed education, and restricted hospital visits.

Prof Scott said it was important to hear from people about what it was like to live through those moments and “learn from it” as a country.

Adults can engage with the evaluation at covid19evaluation.ie until July 1.

A second process is expected to be set up to capture the views of people aged under 18.