*Deputy Michael McNamara (IND).
MOVES WERE MADE within the Department of Health to ‘shut down’ the Dáil’s COVID-19 committee for asking too many questions, its Chairman has claimed.
Established by order of the Dáil on May 6th 2020, the Special Committee on COVID-19 response produced its final report on October 9th 2020 with Clare TD, Michael McNamara (IND) serving as its Chairperson.
At the time, the committee questioned the rationale of the decisions implemented by the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), then Minister for Health Simon Harris (FG), the HSE, the Department of Health and others.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Deputy McNamara shared the view that the committee was shut down for asking too many questions. “A motion was moved on the last night of the Dáil in July 2020 out of the blue, we had no forewarning, the sectorial committees were being established, having shut it down so abruptly the Government then had to turn around and then extend its mandate because the Minister for Health and certain officials were saying they were too busy to come into us, I think we had to extend it twice, we said ‘you will not use this deadline as an opportunity to avoid legitimate questioning’.
“They did come in and answered some questions that they clearly didn’t like being asked, some people it was very unfair to bring these very busy people in and ask them questions I can see that side of it but you can say that about the Taoiseach he is very busy but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to answer for the exercises in power, they were given that power whether they wanted it or didn’t want it is secondary to the fact that power was given to them. The law school in Trinity College wrote a very interesting paper on it and how the lines became blurred and it arguably wasn’t a very democratic state of power but it is important to me, it differentiates us from other regimes that we are less comfortable with that is the ability to ask questions of people who are making decisions on our behalf”.
Although he doesn’t know who was responsible for shutting down the committee, he has his suspicions. “There was a couple of books written about it. I did hear from journalists that would have been receiving briefings that some Department of Health officials were particularly unhappy with being questioned to the extent that they were, that is second hand information. Nobody told me to stop asking questions but I suspect that they might have felt it would have been a pointless exercise”.
His role as Chairman assisted with the Scariff native carving out a bigger national profile during his second stint as a TD with frequent appearances on RTÉ Radio and television, Newstalk, Today FM and Virgin Media Television.
On his apparent bigger profile in the Dáil, Deputy McNamara commented, “I know the Dáil better, I know the people in the Dáil better which is helpful in trying to get things and understanding, if someone has a different position to you it is easier to get entrenched whereas if you know somebody then you can understand where they are coming from, I also understand where they are coming from with their decisions. The COVID committee was the only show in town at one point, literally it was the only opportunity to interrogate power and hold people to account, I would like to think the committee did that, I facilitated the committee in doing it I didn’t do it on my own but certainly I was fair, it gave me certain profile but the longer people are around the greater profile they get”.
In a previous interview with The Clare Echo at the height of the pandemic, Deputy McNamara remarked that a decision was made to “jettison” nursing homes at the onset of the virus. Reflecting back on the consequences of the route followed by NPHET and the Government in dealing with COVID-19, he said, “ One of the obvious consequences I heard on radio this morning was that it was acknowledged the lockdowns triggered a huge jump in inflation, that has been hugely exasperated by the war in Ukraine. Most countries were shutting down but as regards the policy of shutting down and pumping out money at the same time, Biden followed it in America but inflation in America is not as bad as in Europe because it had no energy dependence on Russia and is in any event economically unaffected by the war, in fact it probably helps America but they still have inflation. The response to COVID had a huge impact on inflation.
“In terms of society I don’t know but talking to teachers, they tell me it had a profound impact in classrooms and on younger students creating a guilt in their minds about seeing their grandparents which I find tragic where they were told ‘you might kill your granny’ imagine that in their little heads trying to process it, it has raised anxiety levels in classrooms. More predictably there is the consequences of undiagnosed and untreated conditions, cancer being the main one but many others. Lastly, there’s the impact that all the lockdowns and separations have had, it is at least posited by many doctors, I’ve heard some but not as many say it was partly what contributed to the very deadly flu and respiratory season we had this year that people’s immunity was not what they had been because they were not encountering people. It was awful I thought that people were reduced to being viewed as receptables of pathogens and viruses rather than as human beings to be embraced, I don’t think we should reduce humanity to that but they are, if you meet someone they will be carrying bugs and viruses, you would like not to come into contact with bugs but it’s your ability to fight them off is important, that ability was reduced by not coming into contact with people, we had this very deadly flu and respiratory season in December and January of this year”.
